


All Along the Watchtower

by Khirsah



Series: Patron Gifts [6]
Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Colonist (Mass Effect), M/M, Minor Character Death, Sole Survivor (Mass Effect), Survivor Guilt, Violence, War Hero (Mass Effect)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-24
Updated: 2016-06-27
Packaged: 2018-02-06 00:18:37
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 27,758
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1837456
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Khirsah/pseuds/Khirsah
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The climb from enlisted to XO of the galaxy’s first human-Turian ship was a dizzying one. He still wasn’t completely sure how so much had happened so fast.</p><p>OR: What if Shepard and Kaidan had met before the Blitz?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Piggy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Seluvia](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seluvia/gifts).



> This chapter has warnings for graphic violence, descriptions of death, and very vague references to possible off-screen sexual assault (of unnamed characters). The poem is Lady Lazarus by Sylvia Plath. The song is All Along the Watchtower as sung by Jimi Hendrix.
> 
> This is a gift for Seluvia, an amazing patron and friend. :)

“Sucks to your ass-mar!”  
―William Golding, _Lord of the Flies_

 

The hot Mindoirian sun beat relentlessly between Kevin’s shoulderblades. He could feel the sweat begin to gather along the dip of his spine; it was already dripping from his long, jagged bangs, landing with uneven splashes on the face of his father’s datapad. He swiped the hair irritably out of his eyes and set his jaw against the heat, doggedly re-scanning the last few lines.

_Dying_  
Is an art, like everything else.  
I do it exceptionally well. 

There were kids nearby. He could hear them laughing as they scoured the highlands, bare feet kicking up clouds of red dirt and grit. A few pebbles rolled down to batter the greenhouse windows whenever they raced across the hill overhead, as soothing as the rains that wouldn’t come to the colony for another two months. One of them—Drew?—called a warning, and his voice echoed through the valley.

Were they hunting someone?

No. No, it wasn’t any of his business. Kevin drew his legs up tighter, a frown puckering his brows, and tried to refocus on the words slowly scrolling across the screen.

_I do it so it feels like hell._  
I do it so it feels real.  
I guess you could say I’ve a call. 

He touched the flickering page, following the words carefully. They’d been translated into classic Asari, the beautiful loops and curves of their hieroglyphs tricking the eye if the reader didn’t pay close enough attention. The headache from his earlier biotic discharge had passed a few hours back, but it kept threatening to return—it worried at the edges of his thoughts like a rabid varren, echoing with the hunters’ call.

_It’s easy enough to do it in a cell.  
It’s easy enough to do it and stay put._

Another bead of sweat rolled down his chin and splashed onto the ancient interface. Kevin turned his face to rub irritably against his sleeve, fighting to keep his temper in check. It wouldn’t be half so bad if he could be outside, or back at the house—or anywhere, really, except tucked away in the greenhouse, boiling beneath the UV-tinted skylights. There was a tree just outside the colony outpost that cast a wide, comforting shade this time of day. Curled up between its roots, bare toes digging into the terra cotta soil, Kevin had spent countless hours racing starships and slaying dragons and exploring the farthest reaches of space. He’d fought imaginary duels and learned the proper way to address a Hanar diplomat and even—flushing and glancing over his shoulder to make sure no one was creeping up to see what the weird Shepard kid was up to—skimmed through an illegally-downloaded copy of Fornax.

Drell edition.

...he was really, _really_ glad he hadn’t opened the Men of Elcor special he’d filched by mistake.

There was another chorus of shouts, and the skid of half a dozen kids running, sliding, and tumbling down the hills above. They’d found something, clearly: the hunters, triumphant. So long as it wasn’t him this time, Kevin refused to let himself care.

_It’s the theatrical_  
Comeback in broad day  
To the same place, the same face, the same brute  
Amused shout: 

Damn it. He _didn’t_. He didn’t _care_. He was already on thin ice as it was—Kevin couldn’t afford to go toe-to-toe with Drew and the others again. Whoever they’d decided to pick over today would just have to be quick and smart enough not to get caught. Kevin wasn’t going to get involved this time.

_‘A miracle!’  
That knocks me out._

Another, less literary shout sounded, followed by a chorus of young laughter, very close to where he was hiding: “Grab him! Get his arms back, you fucktard.”

“Oh fuck my twat, you shitshow, I’m holding him as good as I can. Jake, _help me_.”

“ _Help me,_ she says. This is why you don’t send a girl to— Hey!”

Rocks and bits of gravel hit the corrugated metal wall he was leaning against; Kevin could hear low curses, underscored by the frightened pants of whomever they’d managed to catch. Mindoir wasn’t big enough to have more than one roving gang of brutes, but it was plenty big—and saw just enough moving in and out as colonists realized farming was harder work than anticipated—for the bullied to change up every few months. It was possible he’d never even met the kid on the other side of the greenhouse wall.

It probably wasn’t Atara, he reasoned—she had lessons until early evening. Lora? Possibly, though she was quick enough to usually evade capture. Peter? ...no, he’d be cursing back, just as loudly.

 _It’s not me,_ Kevin thought, gripping his pad tighter and tighter, blue light flickering across his fingertips. _That’s all that matters. Right? It’s not. Me._

“Got him,” Sara said. The gang was close enough, he could hear the sharp huff of her breathing. She shifted her stance, kicking up gravel. “Spirits, but he’s a fat one. Think his credit chit will be as big?”

“I just got to Mindoir yesterday!” The kid had an unfamiliar accent, voice cracking high like he was changing com frequencies. Fuck, how old was this one, anyway? Had he even finished puberty? “I don’t have _anything_.”

The blue fire licked across the palms of his hands; it danced across his scrawny forearms. _Damn it, damn it, damn it. This isn’t my fight._ Kevin’s heart was racing, and he felt as if he’d swallowed a swarm of wasps; his whole body was alive with the buzzing. He set aside the datapad and slowly rose to his feet. The scalding sun shifted as he moved, quartered by the vents as the fans kicked on.

Drew snorted. “Just hold piggy down,” he said. “Come on, be reasonable. Things’ll go over just fine if you’re _reasonable._ ”

“Get him on his fat ass,” another of the boys called. “And roll him over. I bet I know where we’ll find the chit.”

“But I _don’t_!” the kid cried, scuffling, voice breaking; he was breathing as quick and uneven as a Volas, nails digging into the thick red dirt as he sucked in clouds of dust. Standing in the doorway ( _What are you doing? You’re supposed to be staying out of trouble.)_ , Kevin could see the way it clung to his tears, making them look like blood dripping down his chin. He was young and soft and from some world where life came easy. Earth, maybe, or some rich station. His parents should have known better than to let him wander around alone. “I don’t, I don’t have anything!”

Sara scoffed and tossed a dark braid. Her pretty face was twisted up into a superior smirk. “Then I guess we’re going to have to take it from your skin,” she said, twisting her soil-stained fingers in the back of Piggy’s impractically white shirt.

Kevin fisted his hand and flung it out instinctively—a sharp whuff of breath left him at the relief of the biotic discharge, blue energy ripping from his fingertips and catching the girl square in the face. She went flying back, hitting the soft give of the sloping hillside with a cry. Her twin braids snapped in reverberation, like a whip crack. It was…almost funny.

Drew’s shocked-dumb face was _definitely_ funny, but now wasn’t the time to laugh.

“Hey, kid,” Kevin said, grabbing Piggy by the collar and pulling him back a few feet. He threw up a barrier as they went, blue biotic fire wobbling impossibly strong yet still untrained around them. “Can you get to your feet?”

Piggy stared up at him, brown eyes wide. He scrubbed at his streaked-red cheeks. “I dunno,” he said. “One of them kicked my knee in pretty good. You’re probably going to have to carry me.”

“Yeah, that’s not going to happen.” Kevin warily watched as the other kids circled around the barrier. Drew, their leader in pretty much everything, was pressed close enough to the barrier that Kevin could almost _feel_ it. It skittered across his skin and made him shiver. “Back off, Drew,” he said, refusing to let unease color his voice. “This doesn’t have to end badly for anyone.”

Drew pressed big, calloused palms—farmers’ hands, even at fifteen—against the blue light and _pushed_. Kevin took an instinctive step back and Piggy sucked in a breath as he pulled himself to his feet. “Oh, it’s already ending badly for you, Shepard,” Drew said. “We’ve got you surrounded— _freak_.”

“ _Yeah_ ,” one of the others snarled, and still another picked up a clod of dirt and flung it at the glowing blue dome. It shook under the assault, shudders running along its surface as Kevin fought to keep the barrier in place. He’d tested off the charts for biotic ability back when the Alliance was running mercy missions for the poorest colonies. A well-meaning doctor had outfitted him with an implant and left him a few holovids on training and controlling biotic abilities. She’d probably intended his parents to send him to a proper camp when he hit puberty, but that…hadn’t so much happened. Money was tight. Money was always tight. And besides, an unprecedented biotic talent had never helped anyone bring in a harvest.

So the dome was…shaky at best. Held aloft by his will alone.

A few of the others had taken up a chant—his name, jeering and cruel as only kids could manage—and were flinging rocks and soil at the barrier. Drew kept pushing at its front, grinning from ear to ear, eyes locked with Kevin’s across the rapidly dwindling space.

Shit. Shit. _Shit shit shit._ He was losing control here.

“Drew,” Kevin tried again, “we don’t have to do this.”

“We definitely have to do this,” Drew countered, giving a little shove. Kevin felt it down to his bones. “And soon, looks like. Your barrier’s not going to protect you much longer.”

Rocks and soil rained down on the rapidly shrinking dome. Red dust swirled about them where the clods fell. Sweat fell into his eyes, trickled down his back, dripped from the ends of his dark hair. He never looked away from Drew, one hand reaching blindly behind him to grab Piggy’s and _squeeze_.

 _Read my mind_ , he thought, trying to telegraph readiness in the pressure of his fingers, _and get ready to run._

“You know what, Drew?” Kevin said, lifting his chin. He felt the power unfolding at the back of his mind piece by piece, like origami. He could feel it down to his toes. “You’re probably right.”

And then, with a mental _shove_ , Kevin let the barrier explode out into a massive shockwave, cascading in every direction. The sonic _boom_ was nearly enough to have him clapping his hands over his ears even as the kids went flying—this way and that, tumbling across the red sands. A few of them smacked against the metal greenhouse, and Drew actually hit the window with a whuffing breath, glass catching the brutal sunlight in brilliant, burning rays as it scattered at their feet.

He didn’t give himself time to worry.

 _“Run!”_ Kevin shouted, turning on his heel and shoving Piggy toward the greenhouse door. He went sprinting after, slamming it closed and throwing the lock with a wave of his omnitool. It would take seconds to bypass, but those were seconds his long legs were eating up ground; Kevin tore through the careful lines of greenery and leapt over a low trough, heading toward the far door. “This way!” he called, praying that Piggy would manage to keep up. He could already hear the howls out outrage through the thin metal walls, followed by the metallic whirr of one of the gang bypassing the lock. Others were scrambling up the hill to run around the building, no doubt—fuck, what had he been thinking?

He redoubled his pace, blasting through the far door and back into the searing sunlight. His bare feet skidded over hot sand, and his heart beat like a wild thing in his chest.

Kevin _laughed._

“This way!” he called, throwing himself toward the path leading down to the colony. Piggy scrambled behind him, cursing beneath his breath, and laughing, too—wild, a little hysterical, and frankly disbelieving.

“You scattered them like pins!” he exclaimed, hooting as they scrambled up the slope toward the stacked metal boxes that made up their home. “Their _faces_!”

Someone too far back to do any good shouted after them; Kevin didn’t bother looking over his shoulder as he and Piggy skidded past the main outpost and into the colony proper. Here there were adults dragging bags of fertilizer or seed or parts for the always-malfunctioning hydroponics bay. Here children had to slow their steps to a more sedate trot as they wove through the confusing maze of pods to shake their pursuers.

Piggy grabbed his hand and squeezed. “You were brilliant,” he said, admiration shining in his tone. “Just effing brilliant.”

And all at once, the building, frenetic excitement burst in his chest, fracturing inside him as he slowed, and remembered, and regretted. _Damn it_ , he was supposed to be keeping out of trouble. “I shouldn’t have done that,” Kevin said, dragging his free hand through his hair, but Piggy tugged him to a stop with a low noise and caught his other wrist. He looked up at him intently, blonde brows knit. He couldn’t have been more than twelve, Kevin figured, and it was already obvious he wouldn’t last the month on Mindoir.

“You were brilliant,” he said again, voice steady. Firm. His face was a wreck of tears and streaked red dust, but his eyes burned with something very much like love. “ _Thank you._ ”

Kevin bit the inside of his mouth and carefully detached. “If we both survive the week, you can thank me then,” he said, taking a step away. “We should split up here.”

“Yeah.” Piggy cocked his head, taking one last long, hard look, then nodded. He shoved his hands into his pockets, turning away. “Yeah, good idea. We should probably go hide. Thanks—Shepard, was it?”

“…yeah. Yeah, it’s Shepard.”

The kid’s smile was slow and impossibly sweet. “Cool. Okay, well, later _Shepard._ I’ll come thank you after we’ve survived that week, yeah?” And then he was trotting off toward one of the newer-looking pods, weaving through milling crowds like a needle threading cloth.

He turned a corner. He was gone.

Kevin let out a long, slow breath and let his shoulders round forward in exhaustion. He felt… He didn’t have words for the way he felt. His head ached something fierce. It was like he was an overripe fruit bursting its skin in the sweltering heat. He’d used too much biotic energy again; or, he figured as he trudged toward his own family’s pod, more likely he’d just used it _badly_. He needed to learn how to channel it better, so it didn’t give him headaches when it built up, and it didn’t leave him limp as a rag when it flew from his body. Somehow, someway, he’d have to figure out how to teach himself to better use the talent he’d been born with before it flat out killed him.

There were voices raised a few pods down when he palmed his way into his family’s cramped home. Drew, maybe. Or maybe not. Either way, he needed to go to ground and shore up his strength. This was a long-familiar song and dance, so he barely had to pay attention to his fumbling fingers as he found the right square of flooring amongst its endless twins and pressed the latch for the hidden storage space that ran the length of the pod’s living room. 

It was a maze of stacked crates and bags of seed down there. There was just enough space for a boy his age to slither down and weave tunnel snake style amongst the detritus. There were pods meant for smuggling, with trick floors and walls so cleverly hidden they fooled the best C-Sec agents. This wasn’t one of them—the floorboards fit messily, cracks just wide enough to let through striped beams of light. The middle bowed where the ceiling of the hidden compartment hadn’t been properly braced, and if anyone was _really_ looking, the hidden latch wasn’t quite so hidden.

Still. It was enough to give Kevin some sort of sanctuary from bullies and disappointed parents, and he was happy to crawl his way through the labyrinth into the far corner where he kept a blanket, some old rags, a few ration bars, and a spare pad he’d nicked from a richer neighbor’s garbage bin. It probably wouldn’t look like much to someone like Piggy, he figured. Someone who was used to having things would look at his little kingdom and see nothing at all. But Kevin Shepard had grown up scrapping for even this little bit to call his own, and it was just enough to keep him hidden for the next stretch of hours as the sun sank slowly toward the horizon and the sky bled like a fresh wound. It was enough to shelter him until his family came home and started to wonder where the youngest and most troublesome Shepard had gotten himself.

He could already hear Mother’s soft sigh of disappointment. He could see the exhausted acceptance on Father’s face. He _had_ tried to keep his head down…but he hadn’t tried very hard, had he? In the end, he’d made a mess of all his good intentions for the sake of a boy he didn’t know and the golden opportunity to face down his childhood rival.

Kevin curled against the blanket, flinging one arm over his forehead and tried not to let himself dwell on what he’d done. He closed his eyes against the slots of sunlight. A bead of sweat slowly wound its way across his temple as Kevin settled into the comfort of solitude again.

There was hours yet before anyone would think to miss him.

He drifted asleep with the memory of blue fire flickering around his body and a small smile touching his mouth.

**

It was raining.

The rainy season was Kevin’s favorite time of year. Mindoir was a dry, dusty place with red soil and a red sun and a searing, parched heat that made him see hazy visions in the middle distance if he didn’t carefully focus his eyes. The only time there was any relief from the punishing grind of living was when the wind began to blow from the east and the clouds rolled in to block the sun. Heavy and thick and so deep a violet they were almost black, the rainclouds seemed to hang low enough to brush calloused fingers across. In the early mornings, a lavender mist would spread across the rolling hills to meet them, burned away by the torrents that came like clockwork each afternoon.

Most kids hated the sudden rains. Most kids resented being trapped in pods like animals, milling about bored and restless with nothing to do. Most kids weren’t like Kevin Shepard; he could sit in the windowsill, bare legs dangling out to catch the worst of the torrent, and watch the sky for hours.

He loved the feel of each drop hitting his upturned face. He loved the rumble of thunder, like the crack of a rifle, and the soft _whoosh whoosh_ of water hitting upturned leaves. He loved the way the ripping storms kept the gangs on lockdown, trapped in their homes and unable to hunt down the kids who were too weird or poor or unlucky to warrant their protection. It was the only peace he ever had.

So yeah—Kevin was happiest when the rains came.

The only problem was…the rains weren’t scheduled to settle in for months yet. The summer still had its chokehold on the colony, fierce and red and _hot_ enough to blister unwary skin. The fields were a brown patchwork and everyone was covered in a fine red dust as they sweated out the terrible days, shoring in for the brief window that marked the Mindoirian growing season.

There shouldn’t have been water anywhere in sight. And yet somehow it was drip-drip-dripping onto his face, splashing against his puckered brow before running like tears over his sleep-creased cheeks.

This… This was _wrong_.

Kevin flickered his eyes open, coming awake by slow, confused degrees. The distant rattle of thunder continued, but it was too… _constant_ to be natural. There should have been pregnant pauses between each burst, while the clouds rolled low; he’d watched the storms his entire life—he _knew_ their patterns.

And yet rain dripped between the floorboards, spattering the old blanket, his hands, his face. Kevin reached up to brush it away, flinching when it stung his eyes, and he didn’t have to smell the iron-sharp tang hovering at the back of his throat or feel the viscous smear of it against his skin for the whole picture—his whole world—to all at once reorient itself in a sudden whip crack of violence.

Blood. Not rain, but _blood_. Not thunder, but gunfire.

He sucked in a shocked breath, eyes going huge, and scrambled back. His bloody hands slipped against the metal hull of the pod, leaving dark streaks like comets in his wake. He was shaking, all at once—trembling hard enough that his teeth clacked together and he had to shove a fist against his mouth to keep quiet. The gunfire was very close; a dark shadow lay just overhead, blotting out the slots of light. Big and terrible and…and trembling, too, impractically long (her one vanity, kept lacquered and neat despite the backbreaking work colony life demanded of them all) fingernails rasping over the floorboards. If he looked very close, he could see the soft curve of her cheek pressed lax against the ground.

“Mom?” he gasped, then nearly bit his tongue with the reflexive fear. Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck. He tried to peer through the slats, tried to piece together whether their attackers were _in there now_ , whether it was clear to crawl out and drag his mother to safety, to dig through the family’s meager supply of medigel. God, it had to be—the sounds were terrifying, falling down around his skinny shoulders in a confusing cascade of rifle fire and alien language and a low, breathy, liquid rattle that was like nothing he’d ever heard before.

He had to do something.

He didn’t know what to _do_.

He was running out of time.

And then, directly above his head, Kevin’s mother gave a soft sigh, air wheezing through her ravaged throat…and went silent.

_No!_

Kevin slammed his hands up, palms smacking helplessly against the slick floorboards as if…as if somehow that could _stop_ it, as if he could shock her back into living. _No, no_. He pounded once, mouth twisting open on a shout he couldn’t utter, a scream, a— A cry, a young boy’s cry, and no, _no_ , this wasn’t, this _couldn’t—_

 _…be happening,_ his mind finished for him, helpless as an echo. His mother’s blood was streaming down in steady drip-drip-drips, even as a metronome, and Kevin listened with sick horror, as, a few pods away, someone began to scream.

He scuttled back, wiping at his face with trembling hands, dashing away blood and tears. The blue light flickered around his slick fingers, but he clenched them into fists, willing his biotics under control. There were heavy footsteps just beyond the little Shepard pod, and harsh voices calling to each other. More gunfire echoed through the red hills of Mindoir and the screams were mounting as people were yanked from their homes, were mowed down, were—

Kevin pressed his fist to his mouth again, skidding back uselessly, then all at once flipped onto his hands and knees and _scrambled_ for the hidden exit. His father, he had to find his father, he had to get to his father, and, and, and he didn’t _know,_ he just knew he had to reach him before…before what happened to Mother happened to him and _fuck_. He scuffed his palm against a jagged seam in the floor, leaving a layer of skin behind, but he could barely feel it. He was cold all over, shuddering as if he were fighting a fever, and when he fumbled with the latch, he thought at first it was just clumsy fingers unwilling to obey.

No, he had to, he _had_ to, there was no choice, he had to—

—be calm. Think. _Breathe. Count the breaths, Shepard._

One.

Two.

Three.

Four. 

Five.

_Six._

Seven.

Eight.

Nine.

_Ten._

…when his hands were almost steady again, he reached up for the latch and twisted, pushing up—but it caught, held in place by some heavy, unexpected weight. Kevin moved to his knees and pressed his shoulder against the hidden square, and whatever was blocking the tile moved a little, by degrees…until he had to relax back again and it settled into place. There was a soft _thud_ of something thick and meaty hitting the floor just above his head. 

Kevin went very, very still.

“Dad?” he whispered, turning to stare up through the tiny slots that let through beams of light (and blood) and little else. He could smell the thick metallic stench, but then, he was covered in his mother’s… He was covered in _blood_ , anyway, and that didn’t mean…

Kevin took an unsteady breath, then another, trying to block out the desperate screams, the men (Batarian?) calling to each other. He rose up as high as he could manage in the cramped space and pressed his cheek along the thin grain separating two floorboards. He held his breath until he thought he might burst, then carefully filled his lungs with the copper and the iron and the sizzle of a laser rifle and…

Pine. Like the forests that covered the land the Shepards had once owned, a generation ago back on Earth. Like the home his father still liked to tell stories about, even though he was little more than a boy when he’d left it.

His father wore pine aftershave; his father had always reminded Kevin Shepard of those old, impossible groves he liked to pretend were part of his blood: eternal and dark and full of mystery.

Dead, now, too. Gone forever.

 _Oh God_ , he thought, sinking back to the floor. His father’s body cast a heavy shadow over him, like a thundercloud stretching across the sky. Each soft _drip drip drip_ was the patter of rain, Kevin tried to tell himself. Each reverberation of a pistol was distant lightning.

 _It’s okay. It’s going to be okay._ But it wasn’t, it couldn’t. He didn’t have to wriggle his way free to know his parents were sprawled dead and staring on the floorboards above him. He didn’t have to stumble blindly out into the kill zone to see the neighbors he’d grown up surrounded by being dragged from their pods and shot or slapped into chains or—

A high scream pierced the air, very close. A young boy’s scream. Piggy? Fuck, maybe. Maybe. It went on and on and on, high as an animal’s wail, caught in throaty ululations. Elsewhere, another scream rose to meet it, and another. The thick _thwack_ of skin meeting skin ( _was that a fleshy rhythm?_ He needed to stop picturing further horrors; he couldn’t _stop_ ) was a steady counterpoint to the stuttering cries.

 _Stop!_ he wanted to scream. _You’ve done enough_. His hands lifted to cover his ears, but he forced them down again, fingers clawing into his thighs instead. He had to listen for footfalls; he had to know when they were coming for _him,_ when _he’d_ be adding his screams to the chorus. Blue fire flared across his vision and Kevin had to bite his lip to keep his biotics in check, wanting to explode out of his unexpected prison so badly it was a constant ache.

They’d kill him. They’d smear his brains across the walls. But at least, _at least_ , he’d be able to take one of his parents’ murderers down with him. At least he’d die knowing he did more than hide.

…but no. No, fuck, that would be stupid. _Pointless_. They’d never forgive him if he threw his own life away like that. Kevin drew in a shuddery breath and reached up to brush his knuckles along the floorboards, right where he judged his father’s face to be. His eyes burned with unshed tears.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, staring up at the shadow through a watery film, feeling the time slip around him, marked by screams and death. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”

Finally, after hours spent crooning to his dead, Kevin sank into a heavy silence. He waited for Batarian feet to cross the floorboards and find his hiding place. He waited for rough hands, and the rhythmic thwack of flesh, and chains—or an energy discharge searing flesh from bone. He waited for something, _anything_ to happen.

He waited. And waited. And waited.

The days passed in a haze and fell away into a deeper sort of night. Gradually, the screaming died away, the survivors were loaded into slaver caravans, and the Batarians took back to the stars. The scent of death was all around him, and time was caught in a dizzying headlong rush—he felt shriveled and consumed by it, weak with hunger, shuddering with thirst, powers still a faint flicker along his periphery as he lay buried beneath his dead. He might have stayed there forever.

Eleven days after Kevin woke to a new kind of nightmare, he finally heard familiar voices. Human, he thought—or was he hallucinating? The stench of decaying flesh had gone to his head days ago, and he gagged helplessly when he tried to call out.

He _thought_ it was human, at any rate, and if he had any hope of surviving, he had to unclench his frozen-tight muscles and let himself be heard.

Kevin reached up to weakly bat against the hidden latch, knowing it was no use. He’d tried to push himself free the day after the slavers left, but he’d already been too weak and cramped by then to manage his father’s weight. Still, he pushed, giving it everything he had. He wet his lips and tried to call out, voice a shattered husk—a soft whisper, like his mother’s dying breath. Nothing like the screams in his head.

“Please,” he tried, but the words shredded his throat. He coughed, gagged, struggled against the surge of darkness that wanted to drag him back under. It’d be so easy to just give in to it.

“All clear,” a voice said, not ten feet away. Kevin felt the reverberation of footfalls over his head; he heard the soft _whump_ of his mother being flipped over. “Everyone’s dead in here. Motherfucking Batarian assholes.”

Another voice echoed mechanically through a comm: “Watch your language, Private. You never know who might be listening in.”

“Right, sir, yes, sir.”

Kevin sucked in a breath and pressed his palms against the hidden tile, willing himself to be heard. He thudded his fists against the floorboard as hard as he could manage. It was barely anything, barely audible.

“What the— Stupid old pods,” the Private muttered; Kevin could hear the unease in the way he shifted his gun. The floorboards echoed as he moved away. “It’s a fuc—freaking ghost town out here, I tell you what.” He was leaving.

No.

_No._

No, no, _no._

Kevin squeezed his eyes shut and _shoved_ with all of his strength, dragging down to deep reserves he hadn’t realized he still possessed. There was a burst of blue fire licking across his skinny frame—and then suddenly the panel went exploding out, sending the dead man who once had been his father toppling head over heels in a massive shockwave.

“What the _fuck_?!” the Private yelped, swinging his gun around to point straight at Kevin; Kevin could actually see the other boy’s finger tighten on the trigger as he dragged himself free, clawing his way up onto the sticky floorboards with a gasp like a man fighting against drowning. His lungs, paper-thin, filled and he _shook_ as he flopped out onto the floor—tacky with dried blood, scorched, scuffed from years of use.

“Jesus. _Jesus_. Jesus _Christ_.”

Again, the metallic voice: “Private, what did I say about cursing over the comms?”

“No, but— Sir. There’s a live one here. There’s— I found a _survivor_.”

Kevin ignored the sudden shouted orders. He was free. He turned his cheek against the sun-warmed board and stared up the length of his arm toward his father’s crumpled form. A decaying leg had been snapped back with the force of his shockwave; his head was at a funny angle. There were flies in his unfocused gaze.

“I’m sorry,” Kevin whispered, closing his eyes, but the sight stayed burned there as clear as a holovid. Just like the screams, it would never leave him. “I’m sorry, I had to.”

_I’m sorry._

_I had to._

_I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry._


	2. Sole Survivor

"Forward, the Light Brigade!  
Was there a man dismay'd?  
Not tho' the soldier knew  
Someone had blunder'd:  
Theirs not to make reply,  
Theirs not to reason why,  
Theirs but to do and die:  
Into the valley of Death  
Rode the six hundred.”  
—Alfred, Lord Tennyson, _The Charge of the Light Brigade_

 

“Okay men, be alert!” Kevin’s commander snapped as she led the first wave. “We don’t know what we’re facing here.”

Bootheels drummed down the metal rampway, then thudded over patches of rock and sand. Kevin fell in with the rest of his squad, muscles tensed in anticipation of attack, eyes scanning the distant high peaks. Akuze was a strange blend of contradictions—huge, sandy valleys stretched to high rocky ranges, swaths of greenery ghosting down the crags like decorative bunting. There were grassy patches even in the central dunes. A few bright flowers bobbed with the sweet-smelling breeze.

As places to colonize went, Kevin figured, it wasn’t so bad. He’d seen (survived) much worse.

“Spread out! Squad leaders, fall in!”

“All right, men! Let’s see some movement!” Kevin’s squad leader called, and he swerved instinctively to fall in line. All around him, fifty some-odd Alliance Marines were melting into formation, forming long lines pointing toward the central hub of the abandoned colony like spokes of a wheel. The shuttles that had dropped them planet-side hummed and began to lift, noses pointing up toward the mountains and the distant stars beyond.

To his right, Corporal Tasha Reed leaned in and murmured, “Seems kind of weird, booting the lot of us down here just to investigate a few missing colonists. What do you want to bet it’s Batarians?”

“Gotta be,” Lance Corporal Paul Yorkes agreed in a low voice. “Slavers came in and wiped the whole place out. All we’re going to find are corpses and scuff marks, like always.”

“Like always. Shit. Ever think we should just wipe the Batarians out and save the galaxy a massive headache?”

“Batarians and Turians, fuck _yeah_.” Yorkes grinned. “Just line them up and bam bam bam, down the fuckers go.”

Kevin grit his teeth, fighting to swallow back the rebuke that wasn’t his to give. Their commander didn’t mind a little smacktalk amongst the enlisted—she encouraged it, even. _Sometimes, Shepard, it really does have to come down to us versus them,_ she’d said on his very first mission out of Basic. She’d watched his expression for any sign of protest, black eyes scanning him carefully. _I’d think you’d be among the first to feel that way, considering._

He shivered now and set his shoulders against the chill that wanted to work its way down his spine. This was the third abandoned colony the Alliance had been sent to investigate. If this was anything like the first two—anything like _Mindoir_ , years and years before—it was going to be pure hell.

But he’d be damned if he let that kind of feeling show.

“Do Batarians bleed blue too?”

“Hey, with that many eyeballs, you figure they see it coming?”

 _No, commander,_ he’d said then, staring straight ahead, hyperaware of her taking his measure. There’d been whispers about him even then. Soldiers looking at him askance as he passed through the barracks or out onto the practice field, voices dropping low. Biotics were still rare enough that his abilities alone would have been enough to make him a freak—the pall of Mindoir was just icing on the cake. _I don’t think it has to come down to that at all._

“Eyes forward,” Kevin said now, voice pitched low as the lines of Marines arrowed toward their objectives. Kevin’s squad had the ghost town itself (and he wasn’t letting himself think of red sand and soft rain and the faint scent of pine. He _wasn’t_ ) while squads A and E took to the high cliffs. B and D were spreading across the open plains where the entire squadron would set up camp for the night, checking for signs of a mass exodus.

God only knew what C-squad was going to find in that town. Kevin had already resigned himself to a fitful night spent chasing down ghosts.

The stamp of fifty Alliance boots echoed through the valley, but as the squads split and C arrowed down the narrow pass to the stacked pods, the late afternoon grew quiet. The air had a strangely heavy quality to it—it tasted coppery and _sweet_ as he drew in measured breaths. Sweat broke out across his brow and trickled down his cheeks. Kevin squinted to keep it out of his eyes, moving the regulation three paces behind Reed. His finger rested near, though not on, the trigger of his pistol.

Just in case. His life in the military so far had been a steady stream of _just in case._

“Fuck, the air tastes weird,” Reed muttered, skidding on an unsteady jut of rock. Kevin glanced up once to make sure a steadying hand wasn’t needed, then back down to his own precarious footing, then over to check the horizon. They were getting close enough to the pod city that he could start to make out individual windows blinking back the sun.

He waited, prepared for further orders, but his squad commander remained quiet, leading them down down down with the butt of her assault rifle pointed toward the ground. Her shield occasionally shimmered around her, visible and then not. That kind of malfunction shouldn’t have passed muster.

 _Spread out_ , Kevin thought, methodically ticking through the orders he would have given if this had been his command. He’d taken to playing that game on every assignment now, testing himself against the mission parameters. In a squad of ten amongst the garrison of fifty, it was unlikely a _Private_ would be called on to take the lead, but it never hurt to be prepared. At the very least, it kept him on alert no matter how monotonous the crawl became. _No more than two abreast— Young, you and Abrams take the high perch there and_ , he scanned the rocky outcroppings for likely sniper nests, _there. Keep us within your scope at all times. I want us in a fan formation—double-time._

_All right men, move._

Instead, they trailed each other in a line like school children, three steps apart from soldier to soldier, all the way up to the entrance to the colony. It reminded him of that children’s’ poem that his old sorta-friend Nala had liked so much.

_In an old house in Paris that was covered with vines_   
_Lived twelve little girls in two straight lines._

Cute. Not so cute in reality, though, especially not when they were entering what would be an ideal kill zone. If there had been an explosive charge waiting to greet them, all of C would have been taken out like Dominos.

They were lucky—there was no charge. But the image that thought painted on his lids didn’t make him any more inclined to trust his squad leader to see him through the rest of his tour of duty. And that, Kevin figured, was the worst of it—that was part of what made him so defective. The rest of C was marching along in perfect harmony, alert but relaxed, atuned, _trusting_ that the sloppiness of this mission would all have some purpose. In contrast, Kevin felt restless and on edge, unable to ignore the sinking feeling that he was trusting his life to the hands of someone who didn’t understand what that kind of faith meant.

But hell. He was still a kid; what the fuck did he know?

Kevin glanced up at the stacked pods that formed the makeshift gate to Akuze colony. Their blank windows looked down at him with accusing eyes, and the silence was all the more pressing here where there should have been so much life. He remembered running through the dusty trails of Mindoir, barely sprinting past the guardpost before the gates closed for the evening. One of the guards—a grandmother or grandfather too old to turn dirt in the fields anymore—would shout down at him as he slipped into the safety of the colony, sometimes literally squeezing between the closing doors at the last moment.

“ _Ho, there, Shepard! You’d better fly if you don’t want to spend the night perched in the dust!_ ” He’d always craned his neck to grin up at the guards and toss off a cheeky salute. The smiles they cast down on him, their watchful eyes, the walls closing him in tight like an embrace—it all made him feel so _safe_. Nothing bad could happen to him within those protective walls.

He wondered if anyone in Akuze had held the same happy delusion.

“Okay, we’re looking pretty empty right off the nut. Spread out, men!” Kevin’s squad leader called. “Search the place and report back in the hour.”

No instructions on who should go where; no making sure they combed the ghost town in an organized fashion and didn’t trip over each other scouring the same pods again and again. It wasn’t how he gave the order in his own head, but maybe _he_ had it all wrong. Kevin Shepard was still wet behind the ears and a round peg trying desperately to fit into a square hole; what did he know about leading men?

They probably wouldn’t have followed him anyway.

So he fell in with Corporal Young because it looked like no one else was taking her six, and he kept his mouth shut, and he spent the next twenty minutes searching through empty pods looking for clues that weren’t there.

It was all so _quiet_. It almost seemed as if the world was holding its breath.

Young gestured to a fresh pod with the scope of her rifle. “Watch the windows,” she said, moving to take point. She was almost as quiet as Kevin, and methodical in a way he responded well to. He easily moved to follow her order, scanning the windows as she moved to punch open the door. It gave a soft, electronic whir, opening onto an empty kitchen. There was food on the counter, Kevin noted as he quietly followed her in, and a paring knife still sticky with juice. He caught Young’s eye and tilted his head toward it; she nodded once, but something further inside the pod had caught her attention.

Kevin cocked his head, curious—and then he heard it too. Soft, rasping; muffled movement and a husky voice, quickly stifled. It was the sound of someone with something to hide—the sound, perhaps, of someone so terrified and traumatized by whatever had happened to the rest of the colony that not even the reassuring call of Alliance Marines was enough to lure them out into the open.

Or maybe there was something far more insidious at work.

She gestured to Kevin, then indicated a position flanking the inner door. Kevin nodded, moving on silent feet. He laid his finger along the trigger in preparation, biotics flickering into quiet wakefulness. The blue light kissed his skin, shimmering over his dark BDUs as he nodded once to Young and prepared for…whatever it was they were going to find.

A survivor? One of the raiders left behind to ransack the place? ( _Batarians, barking to each other in a harsh tongue as they dragged screaming friends, neighbors, out onto the streets. Piggy’s high, desperate ululations piercing the air, fuck._ ) He braced himself for the worst, ready.

Young positioned herself square before the door, shields flickering once as she boosted them as high as they would go—and slammed her fist against the broad green circle that triggered the door’s mechanism. It rolled open with a soft metallic _clink_ , nearly lost under a hissing gasp and a curse and—

“Aw, holy _fuck_ ,” Young said, spinning back around with one hand slapping immediately over her eyes. “What the hell do you think you’re _doing_ , soldier?”

“Shit!” Corporal Brandon Proust gasped, scrambling to his feet. He grabbed for the waist of his BDUs and slung them up, furiously tucking away his spit-slick cock. “Shit, shit, shit, Young, what the shit!”

Kevin lowered his pistol, taking in the whole scene—the rumpled bedsheets, the flush on Brandon’s young face, the desperate steel-eyed look Gunnery Sergeant Marcus Bay shot them as he visibly refused to wipe the back of his hand across his mouth. It was wet with spit, lips swollen and _red_ ; Kevin felt a low, uncomfortable curl deep in his belly at the sight.

“We’re in the middle of a _hot zone_ ,” Young hissed, back still to them. She was flushed a vivid red, freckles standing out like a dark smattering of stars. “What the actual fuck, you can’t be caught with your pants down and your— Your—” She gestured. “—out in the middle of a _hot zone_.”

Brandon shoved his fingers through his short-cropped red hair. “I know, _I know,_ Maggie, _hell_ , okay? I know. It’s just— Fuck. I’ve been transferred to a new company, and this is our last… I’m gonna be on a whole different ship, and god knows when I’ll—”

Marcus was staring straight ahead; Brandon was practically jittering out of his skin. Kevin flicked his gaze between the two of them, catching the way Marcus’ fingers twitched out toward Brandon as if he wanted to catch his hand—as if he wanted to comfort the younger man as he quite visibly fell apart. It was that single, aborted gesture that decided him.

“We didn’t see anything,” Kevin said. “We weren’t here. Carry on.”

“What?” Young demanded, jerking her head up to stare at him.

“ _What?_ ” Brandon echoed, voice climbing toward obvious hysterics.

Marcus just flushed and met Kevin’s eyes, nodding once, silent and perfectly still as if he were at parade attention. He was older than Kevin by at least twenty years, maybe more. There was a generous handful of salt in his dark hair, and he wore craggy scars from wounds medigel hadn’t been enough to heal. He was a man who’d devoted himself to service, and it suddenly struck Kevin as unimaginably _sad_ that he found himself in his middle years forced to sneak around in order to _touch_ , to be touched, to feel something, anything good.

He didn’t know if it was the gay thing (no longer such a big deal except in dwindling pockets of the fleet, like theirs) or the fraternization thing (always and forever a big deal wherever they went), but in that one aborted _reach_ , Kevin could read an entire secret courtship won and lost between battlefields, and all at once, he wanted to be anywhere else. He wanted to give the lovers time to say their goodbyes in private.

God only knew when they’d have another chance.

“Come on,” he said, pulling away from the open doorway. He glanced back toward Young, and even though she was a Corporal to his Private, even though she had years in both the service and life to him, Kevin added, “Fall in, soldier. This isn’t our business, and we have a colony to pin down.”

And, wonder of wonders, she moved to follow his orders as if she’d just been waiting for them to be given. The door swished shut as she stepped out of the way, closing with a quiet hum. Kevin lifted his omnitool and waved it across the mechanism, installing a simple hack that would give the two men some semblance of privacy…or at least time to pull apart should anyone else stumble this way. It wasn’t much, but it was the best he could do.

Young watched him work, brows beginning to quirk, lips pursed. Kevin felt a flush creep up the back of his neck at her steady appraisal, and just like that, the balance of power—the _command_ —shifted back to where it belonged.

“Ma’am?” he muttered beneath his breath, work done. He turned and moved back into a ready stance, pistol lifted, trigger finger ready, biotics a quiet hum in the back of his mind—but the heat made its way up his cheeks and to his ears. He could feel them burning and knew he had to be a ridiculous cherry red. What conclusions must she be drawing about him now?

“Nothing,” Young said after a long silence. She fell in, once again taking lead. “Just trying to figure you out, that’s all.”

They headed through the rest of the pod, then out to a small courtyard. The gentle wind blew heavy and sweet. “Don’t bother,” Kevin mumbled, trying to force away the blush with willpower alone. “If I haven’t managed in nineteen years, you’re not going to do it in less than one.”

Still.

_Still._

It was kinda nice, for the first time since he enlisted, for someone to look at him like he was a person and not a time bomb just waiting to go off.

They searched methodically through the rest of the colony for well over an hour, bumping into other haphazard teams in the unorganized sweep. When they had finally scoured corner to corner and seen nothing but half-eaten meals, datapads clattered to the floor, doors left hanging open—but no sign of actual _life_ —they circled back to join the rest of the squad.

“Empty,” their captain said with a disgusted sigh when they checked in. Brandon and Marcus were there, Kevin couldn’t help but notice, carefully taking up opposite sides of the main courtyard. They didn’t even glance toward each other once. “Not even a smear of blood to give us a clue. Fucking Batarians. Okay, men, we did our due diligence for the day—maybe someone else had more luck. Fall in and let’s get our asses to base camp.”

 _Sound off,_ Kevin thought, giving the mental command. _I want a head count before we clear the area; no man left behind._

C company fell in line, a few of the men laughing quietly over some crack as they arrowed toward the camp set low on the grass-covered sand several clicks away. No one said anything about the oversight; Kevin kept his mouth closed…and silently counted them himself. Just in case.

Base camp was a hell of a lot more organized than their haphazard search had been. Commander Nees may have had radical views about tolerating anti-alien hate speech amongst her men, but she ran a tight ship in every other way. Kevin wished he were the sort of man who could consider that a fair trade.

He fell out with the rest of C-squad to set up tents in the designated plot of land. They were out pretty far into the dunes, tough greenery snaking just a few vines here and there. The actual desert stretched vast and seemingly limitless toward the horizon; if the colonists had made an exodus there, they’d soon find themselves like the ancient Israelites.

Kevin frowned to himself as he finished setting up his small two-man tent, tossing his ruck inside. He checked his pistol, cleaning the sand and grit that had collected along the heat sinks, then flipped the safety back and slid it into its holster. B-squad was in charge of grub and there were no standing orders. Soldiers idly chatted around the small fires that cropped up here and there; in a few knots of Marines, cards were broken out, along with suspicious-looking flasks.

Kevin didn’t bother asking if he could join them. It would just…make them uncomfortable. Make _him_ uncomfortable. Nineteen years old, and he still hadn’t mastered the ability to relax with near-strangers and make himself at ease. Hell, Kevin thought with a wry smile, poking his head into his tent to grab a padd from his ruck, nineteen years old and he’d barely managed to relax within his own skin.

So instead, he turned south and trudged out of the camp, heading toward a rocky outcropping some distance away. The sky was growing dark as the sun slid behind the high cliffs; that strange, copper-sweet scent only seemed to intensify as the air grew thick and dark.

Kevin’s boots scuffed through the sand, the soft _whisk whisk whisk_ following in his wake. With each step he took, the ribald laughter faded further into the distance; when he looked over his shoulder, their campfires were like a far-off galaxy spreading its arms wide across the blanketing night.

He snorted. “Saying shit like that out loud will get you pummeled,” Kevin said, vaulting easily from the dunes to the black rock. There were pockets of greenery here, too, nestled along its crags and grooves. The steady _thud_ of stone under his feet made him feel immeasurably safer—something about the shift of sand tickled a warning at the back of his skull. Something he’d read once, maybe, or something he’d heard in training.

Probably nothing. Just like his unease earlier today at his squad leader’s lax command had led to nothing. He was a know-nothing Private; it wasn’t his job to question the wisdom of his superiors.

He just…wished he remembered what it was that was bothering him.

Kevin frowned and dropped into an easy crouch on the flattest part of the rock, fingertips brushing over its surface. It was cool to the touch, but not unpleasant. Dry, which was what really mattered. He slid his legs out and took a seat, unconsciously scooting back toward a higher ledge that formed a barrier of sorts—a protective wall. It wouldn’t have proved much use as cover in a firefight, but its easy clutch made him feel safer, somehow, more settled. He drew up his knees and balanced his padd on the caps, calling up his book without another glance toward the camp.

They could see to themselves for now; he was lost among the stars.

He wasn’t sure how long he stayed there alone, following the adventures of a crew of Turian smugglers, when Kevin became aware of the crunch of boots and the soft _whisk_ of sand. He looked up, blinking away the brightness of his screen—a figure was silhouetted against the ever-brighter lights of the camp (small fires blazing high, now, laughter and music melding into a rhythmic thumping beat that shook the peaceful night). He couldn’t make out more than broad shoulders and a steady gait, but Kevin tensed anyway, immediately on guard.

The figure paused, and then a deep voice said, “Shepard?”

“Sir,” he said, though the light of the padd had to give him away. He set it aside, beginning to rise to attention.

Gunner Sergeant Marcus Bay leapt up from the dunes to the dark outcropping of rock, calloused hands gaining an easy handhold. “No, please, as you were. I didn’t mean to interrupt your work.”

“It isn’t,” Kevin said quickly, moving away from the pulp novel with a swipe of his thumb. “Work, that is. So you’re free to interrupt.” Pause. “Not that you’re _interrupting_. Sir.”

It really was better when he kept his mouth shut and tried for the whole strong and silent thing.

Marcus didn’t seem to notice his unease, though—or, if he did, it was nothing compared to his own. He grunted in quiet agreement and moved to lean against the waist-high ledge Kevin had taken such unconscious comfort in. He tipped his face up to the stars, studying them for a long, silent minute, and Kevin did his best not to tense up in preparation for…whatever it was that was coming his way. It had to be something about what he’d witnessed earlier. A threat? _Tell anyone what you saw and I’ll…_

 _You don’t have to do this,_ he wanted to say, but he bit the inside of his mouth and kept his peace. Whatever it was the older man wanted to get off his chest, he’d do it in his own time. Prompting him would only betray Kevin’s own nerves.

So he waited. And he watched the stars. And he listened to his fellow Marines echoing loud and raucous across the sands.

“What you saw,” Marcus finally began.

“Isn’t any of my business,” Kevin quickly cut him off. It was almost a relief, after that heavy, expectant silence, to be able to get the words out. “And it’s not something you’re going to have to worry about me reporting.” _I’m not like that,_ he could have said, but the words would have been empty. Marcus had no idea what he was like.

The sergeant gave an uncomfortable cough. “That…actually wasn’t what I was going to say.” He glanced over. Even in the dark, Kevin should see his flush. He was an attractive man, strongly built and carrying his fair share of interesting scars. His hair was more salt than pepper, and the tired shadows on his face told their own story. He had a good smile, though, and kind eyes.

Kevin looked down, fidgeting with his padd. He didn’t say anything.

“I guess I just wanted to say thanks. For what you did back there. It could have gone down…really badly. I suppose it should have. We usually know better than to pull shit like that. It’s just difficult, knowing the end is coming.” He paused. “I tried putting in for a transfer so I could go with him, but the brass needed a reason why, and I couldn’t give it to them. Not without ruining everything for the both of us.”

“It shouldn’t be that way.” Kevin kept his eyes trained on his blank padd, brows knit together. He couldn’t look at the other man—at his superior officer. He couldn’t meet his eyes and still feel free enough to speak his mind. “The regulations are wrong.”

Marcus sighed and swiped a hand over his skull. “The regs are tough,” he agreed, “but they’re there for a reason.”

He…hadn’t been expecting that. Kevin looked up, startled. “But,” he began.

“But it’s a little hypocritical of me to say they’re necessary even as I break them? Yeah. Yeah, maybe. But I keep thinking—what if we’re in a hot zone together? A real one, not the sad ghost town we saw today. And what if I’ve gotta take up the chain of command? What if I have to send a Marine in on a run that’s likely to end his life? Will I choose Brandon? Or will I send someone else to maybe die in his place? Will I _murder_ some poor bastard because I was dumb as shit and fell in love with someone beneath me in the chain?”

“It wouldn’t be murder,” Kevin said, repeating the grave reassurances he’d read in Alliance manuals, heard at Basic—but deep in his gut, his insides were crawling at the picture that painted. “Hard decisions are a part of command, and everyone here has signed up to—”

“To what?” Marcus cut him off. “To die and save me the heartbreak of losing Brandon? No, that’s bullshit and I know it’s bullshit—I knew it long before we started anything.” He let out a rough breath. “I knew it and I still gave in. And even though the Alliance brass is handing me a golden chance to let this _end,_ I keep fighting to stay in it. I keep trying to be sent with him wherever he ends up.” He paused, then sighed. “Well, shit, listen to me go. I didn’t actually mean to lay this all on you like this.”

 _Then why did you,_ Kevin wanted to say. His stomach was twisting into hard, unhappy shapes as he tried to imagine himself five years into service. Ten. _Twenty_. If he stuck with the Alliance, he’d be on long missions to faraway worlds. He’d see new things, sure—see the secret places he’d only read about, dreamed about, through his childhood. But he’d be seeing them knowing he chose these vast and beautiful dreamscapes over the hope of family. Over love.

Hell. If he continued the way he was going, he’d be doing it _alone_ without even the camaraderie that other grunts managed to find. Sitting here, in the shelter of black rock orbiting the distant hum of his fellow Marines as they laughed and drank and fit together the way quiet, weird Kevin Shepard never had, he was acutely aware that this was the most real, the most _intimate_ conversation he’d had since he’d enlisted. And that…

Was that his future? Circumnavigating the tightly knit groups of Marines he’d never be a part of?

Or would he be like Marcus and cling to the first bit of debris that drifted his way, even though he knew in his heart it was wrong?

“Yeah,” the older man said, shoulders sloped in quiet defeat. “Yeah, I figured when I saw that look on your face, earlier, that you’d get it. I knew you’d understand. I guess maybe that’s why I sought you out after all.”

“With all due respect, sir,” Kevin murmured, looking up at the sadsack sergeant and seeing himself staring back, “ _fuck you_.”

Marcus gave a surprised, breathless laugh. “What? You’re not up to shouldering a middle-aged man’s demons? How old are you anyway, kid?”

“Old enough to know not to answer that.”

He gave another laugh. “Fair enough. Look, I wasn’t going to say all of this—and I probably shouldn’t have. It wasn’t fair. But I’ve gotta say, uh. What you saw…”

This, at least, was expected. “Like I said, I’m not going to squeal on you,” Kevin said. He tipped his head back, eyes trained just past the older man’s shoulder. He couldn’t help but feel, if he looked into his eyes right now, in this tense moment, something inside him would break up and start drifting away. He couldn’t lose faith in the Alliance—the life of an Alliance Marine was all he _had_. There was no home left, no family, no shelter waiting for him. There was nothing but this, and Kevin had to learn to think that was enough, no matter what it took. “That’s not me.”

“Yeah,” Marcus said, quieter. “I guess it’s not. The other recruits say a lot of bullshit about you.” That was not a surprise. “I’m starting to think some of it may be right.”

 _That_ was enough to startle Kevin into meeting Marcus’s eyes. “What do you mean?” he demanded.

“You _are_ different. But considering the men who said it?” He offered an unhappy smile. “Being different isn’t such a bad thing. But I’ve taken up enough of your time talking about things that have nothing to do with you.” _Yet_. The word hung between them, humming like the low simmer of Kevin’s biotics. “I’m gonna head back to the camp. You should join us, you know,” he added. “If you gave the grunts a chance, they’d probably accept you.”

“Maybe,” Kevin said quietly. The distant sound of their laughter dipped and swirled like leaves on a breeze. “Maybe in a few minutes. I just need—” Time alone. Time to collect himself. Time to strap on metaphorical armor before he waded back into a sea of people. He didn’t say any of that. Instead, he lifted his padd, tapping the screen until it flared to life. “I’ve got a chapter to finish, then I’ll, uh, see you.”

Marcus gave a nod. “See you around, Shepard,” he said, pushing away from the uneven rock formations. He dropped lightly down onto the sand, regulation boots whisking across its smooth surface. Kevin watched him as he moved into middle distance, growing smaller and smaller against the silhouette of the Marines’ fires.

The night was still, and beautiful, and serene.

…until death erupted out of the sands and screaming split the air. Kevin Shepard, orbiting far away from what would prove to be a thresher maw nest, watched helplessly as the men he’d fought alongside died, flesh seared from bone—and was powerless to do anything at all.

For the second time in his short life, he was the sole survivor.


	3. Elysium: Before the Blitz

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> As you may have noticed, I'm taking a few liberties with the timeline and game events. Shepard is a colonist, sole survivor AND war hero. This chapter takes place roughly 4-5 years before Mass Effect 1.

“‘Where are the people?’ resumed the little prince at last. ‘It’s a little lonely in the desert…’   
‘It is lonely when you’re among people, too,’ said the snake.”   
―Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, _The Little Prince_

 

“Hey, Shep!”

Kevin glanced up from his field report. Lieutenant Tara Brown stood in the observatory doorway, one hip cocked against the jamb, arms crossed. She’d stripped out of her BDUs sometime between debrief and now, and the filmy blue-green dress swirled like the incoming tide around her knees. The bodice was low, haltered straps snaking around strong shoulders to meet in a gold clasp at the back of her neck. Her lips were curved in a wicked smile.

He groaned and lifted his padd as a shield. “ _No._ ”

“Oooh _yes_.” Tara grinned, teeth flashing white against her dark skin, and pushed away from the door. “Come on, Shep—move your tight ass. We’re on _shore leave._ ”

“ _You’re_ on shore leave,” he countered. “ _I’m_ finishing my report and enjoying the quiet while I still can.” Most of the ship’s crew had already gone planetside, jostling and laughing and letting themselves be carried along by their high spirits. Only Kevin and his small ground team had remained behind, along with the skeleton crew who manned the ship while the men enjoyed the dubious pleasures of Elysium.

Drinking. Dancing. Fucking. Taking hits of only God knew what as colored lights strobed and the driving beat of the main colony outpost sank into your blood. He’d been to Elysium once, before he’d been promoted up from enlisted to officer, and he’d hated every minute. It was too loud, too raucous, too determined to sweep him away. He’d done his best to drink and dance with the friends he had doggedly made over this last tour, but in the end, Kevin had retreated like he always did to a dark corner and tried not to count the minutes until he could escape.

The high life, it turned out, was not for him.

“You go on without me,” he tried. “You’ll have more fun without dragging me around behind you.”

Tara didn’t seem convinced. “You try to pull this bullshit every leave, Lieutenant. Not this time. There are drinks and dancing in our near future. And if we’re lucky, the latter won’t end in a visit to the local clinic.”

Another fun memory, and another very good reason why he didn’t venture out with the Marines. God, that had been embarrassing. Kevin twisted away when she grabbed for his arm. “Tara, I’m _busy_. Go bother someone else. Parker. Go bother Parker. He _loves_ going out on the town.”

Tara reached for the padd, plucking it from his fingers and ignoring his protests as she powered it off with a flick of her thumb. “You’re such a nerd. Thankfully, you have me around to keep you interesting. Come _on_ ,” she added, tossing the padd onto the table and pulling at his arm. “We’ve gone without a decent break for _months_. I need to get out there and shake my ass like an asari tabledancer, and I need to do it before I wither away and die from endless reports and _work_ and blah blah blah. It’s your sacred duty as my friend to strap on, climb up, and shake your ass with me.”

“I don’t remember signing up for that.”

“It was in the fine print.” She tugged at his arm again, and Kevin let himself be pulled reluctantly to his feet. “You can keep your BDUs if you want—I’ve _seen_ your civvies, and trust me, you’re going to get a lot more action if you don’t break out the hick colony gear.”

 _I’m not looking for action_ , he almost said, but there was no real point in protesting. They both knew Tara had already won. On the field, she took his orders easily, effortlessly, always just one step behind. She was one of the best tech experts he’d ever seen, and they’d risen up together from the ranks of enlisted Marines to Lieutenant JG, then full LT.

She was the closest thing he’d had to family for a long, long time, and Kevin had learned that if he, in turn, trusted _her_ when off-duty, the friendships he’d never been able to make came far more naturally to him. Tara was gregarious and funny and snarky and bright. Her faithful shadow as she made her rounds of the crew, Kevin learned about husbands or wives back home, children, hopes and dreams and frustrations. He learned how to relax into a conversation and let people know he was willing to listen, even if he’d never be very good at _talking_. He learned how to smile, a little. He learned how to loosen up.

And gradually, the whispers about the weird biotic began to fade and he found himself folded into the fabric of the crew as effortlessly as if he truly belonged. He was invited to impromptu poker games and bullshitting around the galley. He was included in ship gossip and even—to his horror—the hookup rumor mill. By letting Tara refuse to take his natural reticence for an answer, he’d made a friend; by allowing himself to follow her lead as she built relationships with the crew, he’d finally learned what it meant to belong.

He owed her so much. If she wanted his awkward ass on Elysium, moving self-consciously to the driving beat and pretending he’d rather be curled up in some corner with a book and a pair of ear plugs, he’d be there.

“I don’t know what you have against my clothes,” Kevin said, allowing himself to be herded out of the crew quarters and toward the main elevator. “They’re practical.”

“I’m not even going to dignify that with a response.” She flipped long, dark waves behind her bare shoulders and grinned up at him, unconsciously matching their strides. “Three days of shore leave, Shep. Just think of all the trouble we can get into in three days.”

He lightly knocked their shoulders together, turning his face to hide a smile. “Yeah,” Kevin said, following his friend through the airlock and out toward Elysium. “I’m really trying not to.”

The cruiser was docked at one of Elysium’s busy hubs well above the capitol city, but huge floor-to-ceiling windows and reinforced glass floors gave a clear view of the alpine planet below, revealing the sparkling jewel of the Vetus System in her green, blue and silver glory.

The city was elegant in design, spiraling out from the central tower like the inside of a conch. Twin rivers bracketed the residential square, and brightly colored footbridges spanned the banks every few dozen yards, arching in delicate wings. Kevin could just make out the shifting colored lights of one of the huge pleasure houses; from here, it, too, was beautiful—a creature of colors and light and not the sweaty, loud, frenetic prison he remembered.

Tara caught the direction of his gaze and snorted. “Stop thinking so hard,” she said, leading the way across the glass skyway toward the waiting shuttles. “It’s going to be _great_.”

 _It’s going to be great_ , Kevin thought, mentally bracing himself for the crowds of the port. _It’s just three days. It’s going to be just fine._

**

His temples were throbbing in time with the music. Kevin was four hours into his shore leave, and it was most certainly _not fine_.

He stood by the bar and nursed a drink the color of sunset, striations of orange and pink and gold visible between his fingers. Tara had abandoned him (not that he begrudged her) to cut loose with a trio of locals some time back. He could just see her if he craned his neck, sweaty and laughing on the dance floor. One of the women had a hand slipping up the curve of Tara’s spine. Another was behind her, hands on Tara’s hips, face pressed into the arc of her neck. The third laughed and swayed with the driving beat, a tumble of blond hair falling about her bare shoulders.

Judging from Tara’s blissed-out face, Kevin was officially on his own for the evening.

He took a sip of his drink, gaze scanning the bar. He wished he was outside. This place had a great view of the three peaks that bracketed the valley. It was nestled at the northern quadrant of the city, the last major building before steel and chrome gave way to rolling hills and farmland. There’d be no other buildings to get in the way of one hell of a view. The windows were all blacked out to keep the club atmosphere buzzing, but there had to be a way to head up to higher ground where there wasn’t so much…light and noise and _people_.

But he’d promised to try. So. He was going to do his best.

Kevin finished his drink and pushed it away, catching the barkeep’s eyes. He gestured, and the turian nodded, already reaching for a bottle filled with liquor the color of a supernova. Kevin could feel the warmth of his drink trying to spread through his limbs; it was supposed to taste like summertime, and yet when he closed his eyes and thought back on the feel of the summer heat, he didn’t see flares of gold—he saw _red_. Drip-drip-dripping down onto his face.

The barkeep slid his drink to him and Kevin caught it and took a long pull without opening his eyes. Now wasn’t the time for memory, but he could feel his skin crawling. _Stop thinking_ , Kevin told himself, but of course, that never worked. His mind always seemed primed to go spinning down dark paths like a pinwheel, throwing sparks in its wake.

Not tonight.

_Not tonight._

Kevin drew in a deep breath, only to let it out again in a hiss when someone jostled against his side. He tried to pull back, but he was getting hemmed in, strangers crowding close—too close, far too close, his personal space shrinking, skin _crawling_ as strangers laughed and jostled and ignored the way his whole body had started to tense in warning.

The music was driving into his blood; he could feel it down to his bones. Blue fire flickered against his fingertips and he quickly curled his hands into fists, hiding the tell-tale glow of biotics. _Maybe_ , Kevin thought, _now would be a good time for some fresh air_.

But then a hand suddenly slipped around his waist, unwelcomed, unwanted, and Kevin nearly took the man’s arm off with a brutally hard, impossibly _fast_ twist. His biotics flared full and bright, lighting the space between them, and Kevin glared down into wide blue eyes as he held the man’s arm twisted between their bodies, a shockwave threatening at the edges of his fingertips.

“ _Don’t_ ,” he said, then shoved the man back. He refused to let himself think about the way his heart was thundering.

“Fuck,” his would-be admirer muttered, shaking out his hand. He stared at Kevin as if he were insane; hell, maybe he was. “What the _fuck_ is wrong with you?”

There were others watching—most of the people gathered at the bar, plus a few of the nearby dancers. Kevin pulled his biotics under control with concerted force of will, letting the flickering blue light die away as he swallowed back the impulse to defend himself. “I’m sorry,” Kevin said. “You startled me.”

“Freak.”

He didn’t flinch at that; no one had whispered that as he’d passed in years, but he still remembered all too well what it was like to have wary eyes on him. Kevin just shrugged and turned away, refusing to engage. Slowly, the buzz of anxiety bled out of the others around him and people began to settle into the bar again…but even so, he couldn’t make his heartbeat slow.

He had to get out of here.

Kevin glanced over toward the dance floor again, just in time to see Tara press a breathless kiss to the blonde’s full mouth. They were a tangle of sweaty skin and laughter. They looked so _happy_.

Kevin closed his eyes and belted back the rest of his drink, not even tasting the flare of sunset as it settled low and sour in his stomach. He pushed away from the bar and moved through the mass of humanity, threading them like a needle as he made his way to a door he’d spotted in the far back of the club. His skin prickled, flushed with the blaze of alcohol, and he was painfully _aware_ of coupling going on all around him: strangers drawing each other into dark corners; skin sliding against skin as they moved with the driving beat; lips and tongues meeting, tangling.

And as much as he may have wanted to be a part of that hedonistic abandon, he just… _couldn’t_. Couldn’t bring himself to crack himself open that wide, couldn’t expose himself to a crowd of strangers no matter how much his skin sometimes thrummed to be touched. He’d already proven how much he couldn’t handle it once tonight.

 _This was a mistake,_ Kevin told himself, unlocking the roof access with a wave of his omnitool. He felt stark in his loneliness, surrounded by so many people. He felt like they were speaking a language he’d never be able to master, no matter how long or how hard he tried.

_Stupid. So stupid._

The pounding baseline chased him up the stairs and through a maintenance hallway, but as he climbed, the club with its overwhelming blare of sensation seemed to fall farther and farther away. Kevin drew in a deep breath, only then realizing he’d been tensing up the entire evening, and let it out long and slow as he pushed open the last door and stepped out onto the roof.

The night was cool, a wind blowing down from the snow-peaked mountains. It ruffled the long ends of his bangs and cooled the sweat that had been gathering on his skin. Kevin stood in the doorway for a long minute, just filling his lungs with the clean, open air. It felt like pieces of heavy armor were falling away one by one; the sky was open and beautiful and full to bursting with stars.

He took a step forward, then another, letting the door slide shut behind him. Kevin could still hear the club’s music, but it was distant now, a low thrum underlying the beauty of the Elysium night. Stars winked bright overhead, millions of them scattered across the vast canvas of space. To the west hung Elysium’s sister planet, hovering like a geode in the night sky. Cracks in the planet’s surface were visible even from here, glowing multivariate shades of violet, indigo, lavender against the hard shell of its rocky surface.

 _Beautiful,_ Kevin thought, and slowly began to relax into his first genuine smile of the evening.

“It’s nice, isn’t it?”

He startled at the unexpected voice, turning and tensing on instinct. There was a shadow some yards away, perched on the edge of the roof. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, he could make out the shape of a man—perhaps his age, perhaps a little older, dressed in casual dark pants and a shirt open just far enough to show the line of his throat.

Kevin cleared his throat, fighting against the instinct to turn on his heel and leave. _Coward,_ he thought viciously. _When will you ever stop running?_ “It’s nice,” he agreed, hesitating a long minute before forcing himself to move cautiously closer. The other man just tipped his jaw, face shadowed. He seemed to be watching him, but the weight of his gaze didn’t feel like an imposition to Kevin. At least, it didn’t make him want to pull back and throw up every guard he could think of. That was something.

“Nice,” the man echoed, sliding over to make room for Kevin—casual, as if he could sense Kevin’s reluctance. “It’s funny: the human language has hundreds of dialects, thousands of words, and faced with a view like _that_ ,” he jerked his chin toward the glowing violet planet, the swirls of stars, the high peaks with their ghostly white fingers, “all we can come up with is _nice_. Kind of makes you wonder whether humanity’s ready to play with the big boys yet.”

“Humanity’s ready,” Kevin said, only hesitating a moment longer before moving to join the other man. The ledge he’d found was perfect, offering an uninterrupted view of the sky. From here, you could almost forget the rest of the city existed. “‘It was a sort of ferocious, quiet beauty, the sort that wouldn't let you admire it. The sort of beauty that always hurt.’”

He glanced over to meet warm brown eyes and fought the urge to flush. “If nothing else, we’re very good at letting someone more eloquent say what we can’t.”

“ _Nice_ ,” the man said again, and both of them laughed. Kevin could feel himself slowly uncoiling in response; stranger or not, there was something he instinctively liked about this man. Maybe it was his gravel-honey voice with its faint northern inflection. Maybe it was the warmth he could feel casting off his skin, or the dark sweep of his lashes as he dipped his eyes, almost as shy as Kevin felt. Maybe it was the way he let the silences stretch and wasn’t stumbling over himself to fill them. Whatever it was, Kevin found himself leaning in as if caught in the slow tug of a larger planet’s gravitational pull.

“Are you up here to meet someone?” the man added suddenly, interrupting the comfortable silence. “I’m not interrupting anything, am I?”

“No,” Kevin said. “I was just…making a tactical withdrawal.”

The man had a nice smile. A _good_ smile, warm and sweet, but a little smirking, too. The wry twist of his lips added just the hint of a bite to what could have been a too-pleasant face. He had close-cropped dark hair (black or dark brown, Kevin couldn’t say) and thick dark brows. The spark of attraction he felt was unnerving, but surprisingly not…unwelcome. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d felt that slow unfurling of awareness without an immediate flare of panic. “Same here. I always think I’m going to enjoy these sorts of places more than I do. Everyone tells me I will, at least, and I go on as if I believe them, even though I know I’ll just end up spending my evening on some roof or another, wishing I’d just stayed behind.”

Kevin tipped his head in silent agreement. He couldn’t have explained it better himself. “I’m Kevin.”

“Kaidan,” the man said.

Neither added more, though Kevin couldn’t help but be curious. Was Kaidan a local? A pleasure-seeker? Was he crew to one of the other Alliance vessels circling Elysium for the evening? There were two in orbit, both preparing to leave the next morning. Could he sense a hint of military stiffness to Kaidan’s spine?

Did it even matter?

“I just realized what a loser that made me sound like,” Kaidan added, disrupting Kevin’s thoughts. He rubbed at the back of his neck. “Which is…not inaccurate, actually.”

“That’s exactly what I was just thinking,” Kevin said. “Gosh, this nice man is such a loser.”

Kaidan snorted, shoulders jerking, and when he swayed, he very nearly knocked into Kevin. Kevin tensed, expecting the all-too-familiar flare of his biotics…but it didn’t come. If anything, he had to fight the urge to tip deeper into Kaidan’s space, to soak in the heat cast off his body.

This was an unexpected shift in perspective. He wasn’t used to being so relaxed around a stranger. Maybe he should drink two Thessian Sunsets before every conversation from now on.

 _…though then again_ , Kevin thought, eyes focusing briefly on Kaidan’s mouth as he turned to look at his profile. _Maybe that would be just as awkward in its own way._ He forced himself to raise his gaze, skin prickling in sudden uncomfortable awareness. It wasn’t that he wasn’t used to finding other men attractive. It happened a good deal more than he liked to admit to himself—the unfortunate side effect of living cheek-to-jowl with a boatload of Marines. They fought together, almost died together, showered together, slept in the same small crew bunk, spent all free time trapped together hurtling toward the next potentially fatal mission… It was impossible not to feel _something._

But he wasn’t going to be like Gunnery Sergeant Marcus Bay. He _wasn’t _. Which meant the men he served with were off-limits. Which meant if he wanted to find a connection with someone, somewhere, it would have to be off-duty. Which meant he was _screwed_ because he’d never been very good at the shallow attachments necessary for a planet-side hookup. He was too quiet and inward-focused. He was too strange. He _always_ found some way to bungle any attempt at flirtation.__

__Like now. He was bungling it _now_ , Kaidan looking at him with arched brows; oh shit, had he been staring?_ _

__“Sorry,” Kevin said, looking away with a flush._ _

__“S’okay.” He could feel Kaidan’s eyes on him, assessing. He wondered what he saw. “What’s going on in your head?”_ _

__Kevin looked over again, startled. “That’s an unusual thing to ask someone.”_ _

__“I know.” He gave a faint shrug. “Still want to know. You’ve got this look about you, like your body is here, but your mind is racing somewhere out there, at light speed. I’m just curious where you’re going in such a hurry.”_ _

___A philosopher._ Or at least, someone whose brain crawled along the same strange webs as his. Kevin was pretty sure normal conversations between two strangers in a club took a lot fewer unexpected left turns. He was also pretty sure he wouldn’t be enjoying them half as much._ _

__Still, he couldn’t admit to what he’d really been thinking. _(Hello, I know we’ve just met, but I rarely meet anyone I feel so immediately comfortable with and I’d really like to forget myself for the next half-hour and kiss you.)_ Instead, he leaned back on his hands and studied the night sky. When he tipped his face up, he could swear he _felt_ the eerie purple light from Elysium’s sister-planet brushing slow and sinuous over his skin. “I was just thinking—this place reminds me of an old poem I read,” Kevin said. He’d read so much, so widely, that it was an easy thing to fumble for a verse to make the connection he could not. “Coleridge,” he said at Kaidan’s low, inquiring noise. “Kubla Khan.”_ _

__“Don’t think I’m familiar with that one.”_ _

__Kevin’s eyes caught on a particularly brilliant fissure in the planet’s surface, tracing the vein of violet that snaked across its rough skin. Beautiful. God, it was so beautiful._ _

___“But oh! that deep romantic chasm which slanted_   
_Down the green hill athwart a cedarn cover!_   
_A savage place! as holy and enchanted_   
_As e’er beneath a waning moon was haunted_   
_By woman wailing for her demon-lover!”_ _ _

__He’d taken to reading Coleridge over and over after Akuze. Back then, before he’d had someone like Tara to break through a lifetimes’ worth of defenses, he’d used the old books, poems, stories from civilizations dead eons ago to fill in the cracks left by watching so many die._ _

__He’d been lucky. The Alliance brass told Kevin that over and over, as if that meant anything. His instinct to withdraw from the camp and take shelter on the rocky outcroppings like some sad satellite had been the only thing to save him when the threshers erupted from the ground, spitting green venom that melted flesh from bone amidst a chorus of screams._ _

__Fifty men, their voices lifted in terrified ululations as their bodies liquefied beneath an uncaring night sky. Kevin had stood there, paralyzed, unable to do anything to help. Struck dumb and hearing, somehow, Piggy—again, always—in those screams._ _

__Was it any wonder he’d folded in on himself in the violent aftermath? For long months after, there was nothing of reality that could speak to him half as well as the words of long-dead dreamers._ _

___“And from this chasm, with ceaseless turmoil seething,_   
_As if this earth in fast thick pants were breathing,_   
_A mighty fountain momently was forced:_   
_Amid whose swift half-intermitted burst_   
_Huge fragments vaulted like rebounding hail,_   
_Or chaffy grain beneath the thresher’s flail:_   
_And mid these dancing rocks at once and ever_   
_It flung up momently the sacred river.”_ _ _

__“Sounds like a thresher attack,” Kaidan said wryly. At Kevin’s low noise, he chuckled and lifted his hands. “But I’m not really a poetry guy myself. Don’t get me wrong, I like it. I liked _that_. And when I hear it, I get why people are so moved. But I’m more— I guess I like to read more about how people think about the world. The old philosophers, or matriarch’s writings. I get too much into my head for the rest—start parsing out the metaphors and trying to dissect it like I’m back in school. It’s hard to just enjoy the experience.”_ _

___You know_ , Kevin thought, unable to keep it off his face. He felt like a conch dropped from a great height—the outer casting was busted, revealing the soft, vulnerable bits he fought so hard to keep out of sight. “You anticipate the fall,” he said, more to himself than Kaidan._ _

__Kaidan shifted so their shoulders brushed together—a long, slow slide that had something inside of Kevin unspooling bit by bit, making him shiver. Making his heart begin to race. “Yeah,” Kaidan murmured; his voice was a low husk. “Yeah, I guess I do. Danger of thinking too much.”_ _

__“It’s so easy,” Kevin said. Their thighs brushed whenever he moved. He could feel the heat pouring off of Kaidan, crashing over him with each unsteady breath. “Despite the stereotypes, it’s so easy. With what we do.”_ _

___Soldier_. He didn’t have to wonder whether Kaidan belonged to one of those Alliance ships—he felt it, deep in his bones. This wasn’t a man who often spent his nights unspooling philosophy beneath a violet sky. This wasn’t a man born of a pleasure planet. He could sense Kaidan’s depths, the dark places in him, echoing back as if responding to his own._ _

__Like finds like. It took a peculiar kind of empathy to understand a man who had seen so much death._ _

__God, he needed to stop thinking like that._ _

__“You tagged me as Alliance from the start, didn’t you?” Kaidan’s voice was rough, his side pressed firm against Kevin’s, as if they were holding each other up here stories above the world. It took everything Kevin had not to curl against this stranger-who-wasn’t-a-stranger and will arms around him. “Tonight’s my last night of leave. We’re heading out at O-600. I’m—”_ _

__“I don’t want to know the rest,” Kevin said quickly. He pulled back enough to meet Kaidan’s eyes, whiskey-gold and already half-lidded, as if he knew where this was going._ _

__As if he could taste it on the air._ _

__“Your rank, your last name, your ship, whatever demons chased you out here tonight—I don’t want to know. I can’t know. I have to believe I’ll never find you again.”_ _

__“Fair enough,” Kaidan said. He lifted his hand, let it hover between them. Kevin licked his lips. “May I?”_ _

__“Yeah,” he husked. Then, with a strangled laugh, “ _Permission granted._ ”_ _

__Kaidan’s handsome face split into a crooked grin even as he leaned closer, broad palm cupping the back of Kevin’s neck. He tugged him in and Kevin went willingly, letting himself be guided down to that soft mouth with its barest hint of wicked humor._ _

___Yes_ , he thought. _Yes, God, please.__ _

__He tasted a warm breath and let his eyes flutter closed seconds before lips met. Brushed. Held. Kevin shuddered into the kiss, heart thundering helplessly as it lingered so slow and sweet it almost _hurt_. He reached out to tangle his fingers in the front of Kaidan’s shirt, holding on _tighttighttight_ as their lips moved together in a slow, languorous exploration. He felt—_ _

__He felt unmoored, adrift, but Kaidan’s hand on the back of his neck—so _warm_ and calloused, steady—kept him grounded. Kept him from getting lost inside his own mind as Kevin parted his lips and brushed his tongue oh-so lightly along the seam of Kaidan’s mouth._ _

__Kaidan sucked in a breath, grip tightening. And then his own tongue flickered out to curl against Kevin’s. They slid together once, exposed in the cool air, before Kaidan took control of the kiss and licked deep, deeper, swallowing the groan he couldn’t._ _

__God, Kaidan’s mouth. It was sweet with the tang of hops and citrus. _Hot_. His tongue was a slick glide and his teeth raked _just so_ , making Kevin shudder and press even closer. Before, in the club, his skin had been itching with the need to get away; now, here, he couldn’t get enough. He wanted to be _touched_ , to touch Kaidan in return. He wanted to push him down against the concrete and map his body with a cartographer’s precision._ _

__He couldn’t do that. He couldn’t _have_ that. But he could kiss, and touch the bits of Kaidan exposed to the violet-tinged air. For a few minutes, he could pretend._ _

__“Kaidan,” Kevin murmured, curling their tongues together. When he slid a hand up to rasp calloused fingertips along the other man’s jaw, Kevin could feel the bristles of stubble, then the soft expanse of skin…pulse thundering at the hollow of his throat. Kaidan moaned and arched into it, restless._ _

__He felt fragile, _beautiful_ , against his fingers, wholly new and unexpected. When was the last time he’d allowed himself to have this?_ _

__Too long._ _

__One kiss melted into another, into another in a long, slick glide of heat. He wanted so much he was almost dizzy with it. Kaidan’s tongue curled against his and it was all he could do to keep from gasping. A big hand fell to his hip, fingers tangling against the cloth of his BDUs. Kaidan was slowly, inch by inch, dominating the kiss—Kevin could feel it in the way he subtly pressed him back. The way his thumb brushed over Kevin’s hipbone through layers of cloth._ _

__And then Kevin fisted a handful of dark hair and _yanked_ Kaidan in for a deeper kiss, sucking hard on his tongue, fighting back—and the way Kaidan jerked and _keened_ in mingled shock and need shot straight to Kevin’s cock. _Fuck_ , that was beautiful. That was so—_ _

__He tightened his grip, riding out the needy, unexpected writhe of Kaidan’s body, wanting _nothing_ more than to grab at the front of his open-necked shirt and rip it down the center. Would Kaidan like that, he wondered as Kevin fought and won control of the kiss, keeping it deep and hard and driving. Tongues twined hot, teeth raking sharply enough to wring a strangled cry from the other man._ _

__Jesus fuck. He thought maybe he would._ _

__And then Kaidan cried out, startlingly loud in the still night air, and there was no _maybe_ about it._ _

__Heat was unspooling through his body, and a kind of fierce joy he hadn’t felt for years. He could feel Kaidan arching against him, breathless with a laughing moan, and Kevin had to break the kiss to bury his face against the arch of that gorgeous neck, breathing in the scent of leather and wool and sweat and medi-gel—the faint odor that always seemed to linger on a soldier’s skin._ _

__He was so fucking _happy_ , almost giddy with it, and he couldn’t say why._ _

__“Shit, I’m sorry,” Kaidan gasped, gravel-rough voice pitched even lower, deeper. It made his toes curl. “Usually I’m not so— You’re just— Intense.”_ _

__That shouldn’t have made him grin. “I could say the same.”_ _

__“No,” Kaidan said seriously. He reached up to cup Kevin’s jaw with both hands—framing his face. His expression was serious despite the flush sweeping across his cheeks and the wild disarray of his hair. His lips were wet and swollen and so fucking perfect it was all Kevin could do not to lean in and steal the words with a flick of his tongue. “I mean it. Who _are_ you?”_ _

__And that was always the question, wasn’t it? That would always _be_ the question. “Tonight,” Kevin said, sinking his fingers back into Kaidan’s dark hair and gripping tight enough to make him whimper, “I’m whoever I want to be.”_ _

__And when he pulled the unresisting Kaidan back into a heated kiss, he almost believed it could be true._ _


	4. Elysium: After the Blitz

“The real hero is always a hero by mistake; he dreams of being an honest coward like everybody else.”   
―Umberto Eco, _Travels in Hyperreality_

 

“Hey, Shep!”

It was dark again. Colder, now that so many of the fires eating the heart of the city had been put out. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard local gunfire, which was the only reason he was allowing himself time to rest, but the screams were still ringing in his head. If he let himself close his eyes, they spanned back years, a decade, ever-growing like an echo. No, ripples in a pond. Wasn’t that the analogy he was fumbling for? The screams were like ripples in a pond.

“Shep!”

He scrubbed at his face, wiping away the sting of sweat and grit. His nose was filled with the acrid tang of smoke and he was so damned tired he thought he could just continue to sit here beneath the shelter of this crumbling wall and never wake up. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d slept; it had reached a point where not even stimulants were able to touch him. Exhaustion had carved deep groves into flesh and bone and thought and _memory_ …though in his worn-down state, he couldn’t be sure what he was recalling so vividly. Too many of his memories ended in screams.

“ _Shepard_.”

“Hey, lay off,” one of the Alliance soldiers he’d commanded snapped. Kevin lifted his head wearily, watching as the kid body-checked the intruder. The rest of his team was arrayed around him, weapons hoisted but not pointed; they were better-trained than that. Ha. _Better-trained_. Even if that wasn’t true a few days ago, it sure as hell was now. They’d been through a trial of fire. A _reckoning_. A…

Jesus, the words were slipping away like water through his fingers. A something. They’d all been through one hell of a something. Together. Their fiercely protective loyalty would have warmed him if he had the energy left to feel anything at all.

He supposed it still did, a little. Good sign that he could feel something besides tired and determined.

“I need to speak with Acting Commander Kevin Shepard,” another, harder voice said. Kevin wiped at his face again as he straightened from his slump, biotics giving a weak jangle at the motion. His head was killing him. “I have orders.”

“You can go shove your orders up your twat,” the kid said, crossing his arms. “Can’t you see Shepard is _resting_? Jesus fuck, the guy just saved Elysium. Now that the Alliance finally gets off their asses and sends reinforcements he’s supposed to, what, go running with his tongue lolling? _Fuck off_.”

 _I didn’t save anything._ “Stand down, Private,” Kevin said, forcing himself to his feet. The world swam but he kept his feet planted wide and ignored its swing. Focused past it. He was getting good at ignoring the limitations of his own body. He went to parade attention. “Acting Commander Kevin Shepard reporting.”

“ _Shep_.” The second woman pushed past his bristlingly protective crew, shoving aside the loud-mouthed kid when he began to protest. She swam into full focus as she neared—brown skin streaked with ash and blood, a savage-looking burn pulling the right side of her face. He had dreamlike memories of grabbing her as the ceiling caved, throwing his arm up to shield them both as his barrier flickered, then flared to life. A shard from the burning rafter had made it through seconds before they were shielded, and her scream had been the first he’d heard, slicing all the way back to that gut-punch memory of Piggy’s desperate ululations. He’d grabbed the burning wood in one hand and flung it away without thought, without hesitation. Now, when he clenched and unclenched his fist, he could feel the pull of his own half-healed burn tightening his fingers…but, weirdly, there was _still_ no pain. 

_You saved me; you fucking saved me_ , she’d gasped as he’d hurriedly slapped on a field ration of medigel. In the middle of that first wave, with Elysium crumbling to dust around them and the resistance not yet formed, it hadn’t felt like much of a triumph. Now, he wasn’t sure what it felt like. Like he was standing underwater.

“Tara,” he said, focusing on her eyes. He startled when she grabbed his face between her palms and kissed him _hard_ , but he didn’t pull away. “I’m glad you made it.”

“A hell of a lot more than me made it thanks to you. We’ve been searching for you everywhere.” She glanced over her shoulder, hands still cradling his face. “The bastards have been beaten back. It’s official: Elysium is ours again.”

Acting Private Moss—who only a few days ago had been a waitress in an upscale dance hall—just snorted. “We kinda figured that when all the shooting stopped,” she said, hoisting the gun Shepard had given her.

“Shepard wouldn’t have stopped if it wasn’t,” one of his other men added.

And another: “Shepard would never have stopped.”

“ _Shepard_ ,” Tara said, a possessive note in her voice, “needs to come with me. We’re taking you to medical,” she added, focusing back on him. “Once the docs clear you, a Captain Anderson wants to see you. You’re a fucking hero, Shep.”

He caught her wrists and gently tugged them down. “No one’s a hero until he’s dead,” Kevin said. “That’s how it works. I’m glad you made it.”

“Yeah, well.” His friend offered a crooked smile, burned flesh tugging taut. “In that case, I guess I wasn’t ready to be any kind of hero either. Come on. Your squad is welcome to join us.”

“His squad’s not leaving his side.” The woman who’d acted as his second—once his original second had painted crumbling brick with the inside of his skull—jerked her chin and stared Tara and the unfamiliar Alliance soldier down. 

The other officer frowned. He could only imagine what they looked like to her. Only a third of them were soldiers—the rest were cooks, waitresses, garage attendants who happened to know their way around a gun. During the first pounding fury of the blitz, there hadn’t been much time to care about finding and outfitting a traditional squad. If they had any hope of holding back the enemy until reinforcements came, they’d had to act _fast_.

Fast and brutal and without fear or mercy. It was amazing, Kevin thought as he tipped his chin toward his second, what miracles necessity could birth. “I appreciate that. All of us should take advantage of the Alliance’s med facilities…and mess hall.”

There was a quiet cheer at that, quickly stifled. 

Kevin’s lips quirked. “Tara,” he said. Then, to the officer with the fierce frown and Lieutenant Commander epaulettes, “Ma’am.”

“From what I hear tell, soon I’m going to be saluting _you_ —Acting Commander.”

 _Acting_ seemed apt, Kevin decided as the ragtag group fell into order and moved out at his discrete gesture. Once out of the heat of battle, where every second mattered and every decision was life-or-death, he _felt_ as if he were acting.

He wondered how much longer he’d have to keep it up before he was given a quiet bunk and a few hours in which to unravel.

**

Four hours, it turned out. Four long and increasingly painful hours.

“I really wouldn’t advise this,” Kevin heard the doctor murmuring. They’d been taken to the makeshift medical bay first, where Kevin had refused treatment until every single one of the men and women under his command had been treated. The doctor could have overruled him if she was Alliance, but since she wasn’t, she just gave a frustrated huff of breath and started ordering her assistants around. Even with the Alliance in full control of Elysium, supplies were tight and manpower limited, so Kevin had waited his turn for hours, watching the controlled chaos with vision that kept blurring in and out.

He kept his brain alert by giving his report of the attack on Elysium—the Blitz. He told of how he’d gone to the club with his friend and fellow officer, Tara, for R&R the night before. He left out the part about meeting a whisky-eyed stranger and making out on a rooftop, but he had explained that he’d been out until the early hours of morning and had chosen to rent a room rather than make his way back to his bunk.

The capsule hotel had been hot and stuffy, the air stifling. He’d had a fitful few hours of sleep before deciding not to waste the opportunity to enjoy the fresh planet-side air—walking along the winding streets as the sun rose. Kevin wasn’t even ready to admit to himself that he’d watched the sky as the day grew slowly brighter and brighter, thinking of the Alliance solider he’d never meet again and remembering his parting words:

“If you ever get where you’re going, don’t forget to take a minute to enjoy the view.”

“In case it’s ‘nice’?” Kevin had quipped, grinning out of one corner of his mouth. He could still taste Kaidan on his tongue, could feel the heat of his breath spanning across his cheeks. It was the closest he’d felt to truly happy in a long, long time.

Kaidan laughed. “Yeah,” he’d said, shaking his head as he—seemingly reluctantly—pulled away. “In case it’s nice. I’ll…see you around, Kevin.”

A lie, but a good one. Hours after that parting, walking through the slowly waking streets of Elysium and thinking of Kaidan already speeding half a galaxy away, he’d allowed himself a wistful sort of smile and shaded his eyes against the sun. “See you around, Kaidan,” he’d said—

—and then he’d spotted the vanguard.

Everything after that was blood and screaming metal and bullets and a steady, desperate clanging in his head. _Not again, not again._ He’d lived through the destruction of Mindoir. He’d witnessed the massacre of his entire unit. He refused to be the last one standing this third and final time.

_Not. Again._

And now, men taken care of, report given, his own injuries seen to, he was leaving the med bay with the doctor’s words murmured low behind him: _I really wouldn’t advise this_. Well. Story of his life so far, Kevin supposed. He offered an only slightly awkward smile before following Lieutenant Commander Yang out into the ruin of Elysium again. The city was still pouring smoke into the atmosphere from the shifting remains of key buildings. Voices were raised, though the tenor had subtly changed, words no longer screamed in fear.

He didn’t question as he followed Yang out to a landing zone and into a waiting shuttle. She tapped on the half-wall separating them from the cockpit as the door closed, and Kevin slid into a too-comfortable seat just in time for the shift in momentum. The leather molded to his body; it would be hell to keep from drifting off.

Yang must have read that struggle in his eyes. Her thin lips pulled into a smile that didn’t fully reach her eyes. “I won’t be offended if you nod off during transport,” she said. “You’ve already given your report, and if it’s to be believed, you haven’t slept in days.”

“No. Thank you,” Kevin said. He wouldn’t be able to sleep with her watching him. If he were honest with himself, he wasn’t entirely sure he’d be able to sleep at all without chemical assistance, no matter how exhausted he was. The doctor had been dismayed by how many stims he’d had to take just to stay on his feet; the body wasn’t made to come down from a high like that. Not without consequences. Not without help.

Instead, he turned his head to look out the window, watching the city fall away, followed by the blur of clouds and burn of atmosphere. When they broke free, he swept his gaze through the dark as if looking for—

Looking for Kaidan, he thought. Had Kaidan been one of the reinforcements? Or was he already too far away?

Jesus, why did he _care_?

And yet he did care, a great deal. It soothed that jangling, over-stimmed, shaken part of him to think of the man on the roof out there watching over Elysium, having flown back to help Kevin save as many as he could. It helped to imagine him standing by an observation window of one of those Alliance cruisers and watching Kevin’s shuttle cut through space; if he lifted his gaze at just the right moment, perhaps their eyes would meet, unknowing, without truly seeing, over this vast distance.

Kevin gave a small, breathless laugh. “That willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith,” he quoted.

Yang looked up from her datapad. “Pardon?” she said.

“It’s nothing,” Kevin assured her, and went back to watching Elysium fall away and dreaming useless, self-indulgent dreams.

**

Captain David Anderson was there to greet them when the shuttle docked. He stood at military stiffness—a big, powerful man with boxy shoulders and a hard jaw. Kevin felt his stomach flip at the first sight of him, but as they drew near, he noted the lines about the Captain’s mouth and the unexpected kindness in his eyes.

“Commander Shepard,” Anderson said, moving forward the last few steps and offering his hand when Kevin would have saluted. “Welcome aboard.”

“Thank you, sir,” Kevin said, shifting gears with only a brief, awkward pause. He took Anderson’s hand in his, pleasantly surprised by the firm grip. Callouses spoke of a man who used his gun as a matter of course instead of exception. It was hard to trust military leaders who let their men take all the risks, even if it was technically Alliance protocol for the captain to refrain from active combat. “Though it’s _Acting_ Commander; I’m sure it’ll be just Lieutenant again in a day or two.”

Anderson cocked his head, holding Kevin’s grip a beat or two longer than necessary. “Is that really what you believe?” he asked, though he didn’t elaborate. “I didn’t expect you so soon. I was under the impression you were three steps from collapsing.”

“We thought it best to report in right away,” Yang interrupted quickly. “He’s been cleared by medical.”

The captain let go, one dark brow quirking. “Really? Not a very _good_ medical, I’d wager. We’ll get you checked out by our ship doctor; you can bunk up for a few hours. This doesn’t have a ticking clock attached yet.”

 _This_? What was _this_? Kevin fell into step with Anderson as he led the way through the cargo hold toward the wide rear stairwell. “All due respect sir, I’m fine.”

“All due respect back, son, but I’ll let the doctor tell me that. Left.”

They turned, taking the left at the head of the stairs. Men and women in Alliance uniform passed by, hard at work. They kept shooting Kevin glances at they passed, and a soft whisper followed in his wake. He hunched his shoulders against it, self-conscious—remembering the sibilant murmurs following him after each great tragedy in his life.

 _Stop_ , he told himself, and resolutely ignored the creeping up his spine.

The medical bay was small and clean and exactly like every Alliance ship infirmary Kevin had ever seen, with two exceptions. There was a brightly colored potted plant sitting on the doctor’s desk, bolted down against sudden tactical maneuvers but still remarkably pretty; its heady scent filled the air, nearly drowning out the cool tang of medigel.

And then there was the doctor herself.

“Ah,” she said, rising smoothly. “I’d wondered when you’d bring the hero of the hour to see me.”

Kevin stiffened even as he fought that impulse to close up tight. “I’m not a hero,” he muttered; he’d gotten enough of that down _below_ , on the planet. They’d meant well, all those people calling out to him as he led his team through, but it all felt so… _wrong_ beneath his skin. “…ma’am.”

The doctor grinned. “Let me know how that goes, will you?” she said. Tall and lean, she had softly graying hair pulled back into a loose chignon and a lined face that could be anywhere from forty to sixty. The wry, friendly sarcasm instantly put Kevin at ease, though he couldn’t say why—he _hated_ doctors. Physicians, shrinks. It didn’t matter what form they took; they always wanted to crawl up inside his head and take a look around.

But this one just flicked her gaze over him, then toward the captain—not dismissing Kevin so much as accepting him and moving on. It made him relax the way a thousand kind reassurances never could have.

“I want you to look over Commander Shepard here,” the captain said, clasping Kevin on the shoulder. The touch was firm, warm, and he found the tight clench of his muscles relaxing even further. Strange. “Patch up whatever needs patching and make sure he gets some rest. It’s going to be FTL speed from the moment the press catches wind of this, and I want our butts out ahead of it.”

“I don’t need rest,” Kevin lied, but they both just shoot him a nearly identical flat, disbelieving stare. He fought the sudden urge to rub the back of his neck wryly. “But I’ll take whatever you’re offering, sir.”

Anderson nodded. “Good man. Chakwas?”

“I’ll send word when we’re ready,” she said easily. He nodded again, then shot Kevin something that came very close to a small before turning on his heel and leaving the little medical bay. The doors swished shut behind him, soft as a whisper.

“Now,” Doctor Chakwas said brightly, leading the way toward the back of the medical bay. “How about you climb up here and we’ll get started? I’ve got a feeling there’s nothing left wrong with you that some fluids and about twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep won’t cure…after we get those stims out of your system. In case you’re wondering what my official medical recommendation on the use of stims is,” she added as Kevin hopped up onto the infirmary bed she gestured to, hyperaware of the way it hummed beneath his weight, medical scanners activating. “I recommend when you’re tempted to use them, you try shooting yourself in the foot instead. Just as effective and half as likely to lead to lasting damage.”

He allowed her to gently push him down. Above him, a robotic arm swung close and a soft blue light fell over him. His muscles tensed in immediate response. “I didn’t have a choice,” Kevin said, fighting against the sudden urge to scramble out of the bed and go flying from the room. Fuck, he _hated_ that this never got any easier. “I had to stay awake no matter the cost.”

She made a displeased hum low in her throat. “Well then, Commander Shepard,” Doctor Chakwas said. “Let’s see what the cost is then, shall we?”

**

He woke with a strangled scream, sweat soaking his sheets and firm hands holding down his thrashing limbs.

“Easy, easy there, son.”

Kevin surged up against the grip, panicked—then all at once the world reoriented around him again and he collapsed back with a gasp. Captain Anderson was standing over him, big hands pressed against Kevin’s chest. Doctor Chakwas was over his shoulder, brows knit in warm worry—and beyond her were two Alliance officers holding guns leveled at his head.

Anderson cocked his head, studying Kevin’s eyes for a long minute, then jerked his chin. “Dismissed,” he said. The men lowered their guns and pulled back; the hiss of the automatic door closing behind them worked its way down Kevin’s spine with a shiver.

 _I’m sorry_ , he wanted to say, or maybe, _I could have told you I was broken_. Instead he waited for Anderson to pull back, sitting up once he was no longer held down. There was sweat beading across his brow. His heart was still hammering painfully hard in his chest. But at least the screaming had died with the darkness, and his limbs felt heavy with sleep but his own again.

He wiped at his face and swung a leg off the infirmary bed to stand.

“Chakwas?” Anderson said, holding up a hand to stop Kevin.

She had a datapad in hand, eyes scanning whatever she saw there—the scrolling numbers and chemical compounds that made up his body, his overly complicated brain. Whatever she saw there, whatever road map to whatever made him _him_ , seemed to be enough for her. She nodded. “He’s just fine, Captain. Stims are out of his system, chemicals balanced, vitals good. PTSD, perhaps.” She flicked her gaze up to Kevin’s, sympathy light enough not to feel cloying.

“It passes,” Kevin said, and stood. “Sir?”

“Walk with me.”

Kevin gave the doctor a small nod before falling in step with Captain Anderson. There was even more activity buzzing about the ship God-only-knew how many hours later, and Kevin could feel the eyes of everyone they passed like a touch. It made his skin crawl, being the center of so much attention, but he kept his shoulders back and his head up, pretending with all he had that the whispers following in their wake didn’t bother him.

Anderson led him through the ship toward a comm room, where a big screen took up one bulkhead. The ring of chairs around a crappy Alliance-issue table were all turned this way and that, as if they’d been in use and vacated suddenly.

Kevin paused before one of them, fingers curling behind his back as he settled naturally into parade attention. Captain Anderson was silent at his side— _too_ silent.

A test?

“How long was I out?” When in doubt, Kevin figured, it never hurt to get the lay of the land.

Anderson moved to the big screen. “Long enough,” he said. “There aren’t really words to brace you for this.” When he pressed a button, the screen flickered to life; it was already attuned to a channel—news, Kevin realized, the feed surprisingly clear. Elysium flared bright and pockmarked with burning scars as words scrolled along the bottom of the screen, like ticker-tape. 

The blitz.

The resistance.

Impossible odds.

Commander Kevin Shepard, war hero.

Savior.

“They’ve got it wrong,” Kevin said as the face of a reporter came into focus. She was standing in front of the hulking shell of a building, surrounded by all-too-familiar faces; his crew, looking stunned but elated as they formed a ring around the camera. Most of them had been scooped up from menial jobs, other lives. This kind of attention must have felt incredible.

Good for them. But the way they said his name made his stomach clench.

Anderson turned down the volume with a _click_ , but he kept the screen on. The fervent expressions of his men was framed by the news scroll creeping along the bottom, words repeating over and over. The blitz. The resistance. Impossible odds. Hero. Savior.

“There’s going to be a counter,” Anderson said. “And more action. I won’t lie, we’ve been hit hard, and this victory is the kind of thing we’ve been needing to bolster our men. I’ve never been one much to believe in figureheads.”

“ _Good_. I’d be a bad one.”

Captain Anderson studied him for a long, long minute. “Somehow,” he said, “I doubt that. But it’s what you’d be—a figure, a straw man, strung up for the people to see whenever we needed a boost—if you let yourself go back to your ship. They’ll promote you up, but they’ll keep you where they think you could do the most good…in vids. As a symbol, until that symbol isn’t useful anymore.”

His heart was pounding too fast. “And you?” he asked, sensing the offer. “What would you use me for?”

A dark brow quirked at his choice of words, but Anderson didn’t demure. If anything, he seemed to appreciate Kevin’s bluntness; he returned it in kind. “A weapon,” he said. “And a damn good one. I want you on my ship, Commander. You do that, and I can promise you’ll see more than your fair share of action; I won’t let the brass buckle under pressure from the press and make some kind of statue out of you.”

“You’ll be able to stop this?” He nodded toward the screen, where his face was now staring back at him. Dark hair buzzed short, expression difficult for even him to read…sad eyes. Wasn’t that what Tara always teased him about? He had a poet’s moody, soulful eyes.

“Son, there’s no stopping this,” Anderson said, though he turned off the screen with the press of a button. His expression, when he looked at Kevin, was hard but kind. “But how I see it, if you fly with me, maybe I can help you figure out a way to survive it.”

 _You’ve read my file,_ Kevin didn’t say it; didn’t have to say it. Of _course_ Captain David Anderson had read his file. And he wanted him anyway. He wanted to _help_.

“If you can arrange the transfer, sir,” Kevin said slowly, feeling out the words as if he were creeping his way toward the edge of something new, something possibly _good,_ for the first time in a long time, “I’d be happy to serve.”

The captain gave a crooked smile. “I think I can pull some string,” Anderson said. There was real warmth there, already—and something else. Something very close to respect. He offered a big hand. “Welcome aboard, Commander Shepard.”

And Kevin, without hesitation, took it in his own. Shook. “Captain,” he said—and began to smile back.


	5. Normandy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Happy N7 Day!

“I can't go back to yesterday because I was a different person then.” ―Lewis Carroll, _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_

 

She was a beautiful ship. Swift, strong, deadly. It almost seemed sacrilege to think that someday she could be _his_ , no matter what kinds of promises the generals kept tossing his way.

“What’s her name, sir?” Kevin—Shepard, now, so completely that he no longer questioned it—said, eyes scanning the sleek lines of her hull. She looked like nothing the Alliance had ever outfitted before. Fitting, he supposed, since the Turians had taken such a strong hand in her design. She was small—dainty, nearly—with a trim carriage that had more in common with fighter pilots than freighters. It was hard to imagine she was large enough to carry the horsepower needed to fuel FTL and stealth up to spec.

But he didn’t doubt the engineers’ claims. He couldn’t. One look at her, and he knew deep in his gut that this ship was going to be everything he had ever wanted and more. And he couldn’t seem to bring himself to look away.

Captain Anderson snorted and moved to stand next to Shepard at the viewport. “She’s called the Normandy,” he said with an easy half-grin. “And you’d better work on getting that look off your face before we call muster, son, or half the crew’s going to think their new XO’s gone soft in the head.”

“Aye aye.” He tipped his head toward the older man, lips quirking in return—relaxed and easy in a way he still couldn’t believe would ever come naturally to him. The last few years under Anderson’s command had been a revelation. His record made him the sort of leader men instinctively followed, but for Shepard, it was more than that. He’d followed heavily decorated men he couldn’t respect before; he’d even followed noted commanders who deep in his gut he hated. And all the while, he’d kept his mouth closed, kept his feelings off his face, and did his fucking duty. 

He was a soldier. It didn’t matter what he thought of his orders so long as he followed them.

But with Anderson, everything was different. Anderson cared what he had to say. He sought out Shepard’s opinions like they mattered—like they held weight. And not just because he was some kind of war hero now, either. Whenever one of the other men brought _that_ up, Anderson would just patiently wait out Shepard’s intense discomfort, then move on as if nothing had happened. And Shepard could never quite seem to swallow the resulting gratitude down hard enough. 

Christ, but it felt good to know there was at least one human in the galaxy who still looked at him and saw a fucked-up kid who just wanted to see the stars. Who didn’t let himself get tricked by the legends that were building up steam no matter what Shepard did to quell them.

He _hated_ the way people looked at him sometimes. He hated the way they said his name, like it meant something—like Shepard meant something. Anderson never did that.

Anderson clapped his shoulder, brows lifting slightly, and Shepard startled back to the present, feeling the flush he couldn’t quite keep off his cheeks. The older man could read him like one of his reports—scanning between the careful lines to get to the beating heart beneath. It should have unnerved him. With anyone else, it would have.

But hell. He’d die for this man. If Anderson wanted to crack his chest open and scoop out his heart with his bare hands, who was Kevin Shepard to stop him?

“You’re nervous,” Anderson said. He tipped his head toward the long corridor that would lead to their ship.

“I’m nervous,” Shepard agreed. They fell into step together, walking briskly through the glass-lined halls of the spaceport.

“It’s natural, son. You’ve been leading men for years, but this is your first command. Just lean into it and you’ll come out the other side.”

When he said it like that, it all sounded so easy. “Just lean into it, huh?” Shepard said. “Because none of the men will be able to smell bullshit from a mile away.”

Anderson laughed, nodding toward a saluting junior officer as they strode briskly past. It was _still_ surreal to realize that the man was saluting him, too. The climb from enlisted to XO of the galaxy’s first human-Turian ship was a dizzying one. He still wasn’t completely sure how so much had happened so fast. “They’re most likely feeling just as off-kilter as you. That’s the secret to this whole thing: we may be faking it a good half the time, but the men under us are faking it just as hard. Remember,” Anderson added, pausing as the thick hull doors slid open, “you earned this. Doesn’t matter if you still feel like a colony kid inside—you’re Commander Shepard, and you’re about to step foot on the finest new ship in the fleet. Take a moment to let that sink in.”

“The Normandy,” Shepard murmured, barely hesitating before following Anderson into the airlock. Decontamination began with a low hiss and his heart was racing a million miles a second. He felt almost _dizzy_ with anticipation.

“The Normandy,” Anderson agreed, clapping him one last time on the shoulder before the inner doors opened with a near-silent _whisk_ …and they were on board.

Shepard had to fight not to spin and gawk like a tourist. He wanted to see _everything_. He wanted to get elbow-deep inside her and see what made her tick. He wanted to run his palms over each console they passed and murmur, _Mine, mine, someday you will be mine_. 

The drum of their heels echoed the frenzied pounding of his heart, and it was all he could do to keep the incandescent smile from breaking free.

 _Later_ , he told himself, swallowing back the bubbling emotion and fighting to keep his expression stern. The perfect mask of the perfect XO; it’s what they’d expect from him. Shepard’s image had been splashed across every vid, every zine, every billboard in the wake of the Blitz, and he was still the unofficial Alliance recruitment poster boy. He’d been so exhausted after the days of endless battle that he hadn’t even been aware of cameras trained on him; now, it was hard to see those iconic images and ignore the truth he knew lay under each layer of propagandist bullshit.

His jaw was locked so tight because he was fighting not to collapse. His spine was so stiff because he was struggling not to give in to the shakes. He was husked out and burned dry and practically three steps from collapsing, but somehow, the camera hadn’t caught all that. Somehow, he was _still_ the only person who really knew.

It was a superpower he’d learned to harness ever since. No matter what he was thinking, feeling, experiencing, he could bury it deep and reflect back whatever brave and noble crap the crowd was looking for…just long enough for them to leave him alone to do his work.

He called on that now, tightening his jaw and relaxing his shoulders, projecting an air that was light years away from _Kevin Shepard, scared, fucked up kid_ and closer to _Commander Shepard, man you can trust with your life_. Let them see what they needed to see.

Shepard followed Anderson to the CIC. There were men and women standing about waiting for them, saluting stiffly when Anderson paused in the wide entranceway to take them all in. The star map was active, pulsing blue light casting strange shadows over their faces—twisting and turning in queasy undulations.

“Captain has the bridge,” an older man said, stepping forward. He had the stiff carriage of a career soldier. “Navigator Presley at your service, sir. Welcome aboard the Normandy.”

“I believe that’s my line, Presley,” Captain Anderson said with a relaxed smile. “In fact, I’d like to welcome you _all_ aboard your new home. At ease. The first thing you’ll need to learn about me is that I’ll always value results over formalities; I don’t give a good goddamned if you salute so long as you get me where I need to be going.”

“Yes _sir_ ,” Presley said with a sudden, quick grin, and Shepard—always sensitive to the subtle shifts in his environment—was acutely aware of the tone in the room changing. Brightening. There was a soft rustle, like a breeze through spring leaves, as the Alliance soldiers and technicians all settled back from their stiff parade rest, casting each other quick glances that conveyed relief, hope, bemusement. He understood the feeling—the first meeting between a crew and its captain was naturally fraught. _This_ was the man who held their lives in his hands. _This_ was the man who could make a four-year service as miserable as he wanted. _This_ was the man who held all the power. _This_ was the man who set the beat by which all their lives would run.

Anderson had managed to ease his new crew’s fears in a matter of seconds, and there were already smiles breaking out across upturned faces as he moved with Presley to the steps leading up to the star map; every gaze was locked on his steady broad-shouldered frame.

Every gaze except one.

Shepard swept the crowd, taking his own measure of the crew while they were distracted…and froze when he met a pair of whiskey-brown eyes across the crowded CIC with a sudden shock of awareness, of _recognition_. He could feel the memory of heat against his side, the heady scent of him, the violet-tinged light casting everything in intimate shadow. Despite everything that had happened from the moment they had met until now, he had not— _could_ not have—forgotten the warmth of those eyes, the dark stubble that lined his jaw, the shape of his mouth.

Kaidan.

Somehow, someway, by some strange trick of fate, _Kaidan_ was there, staring at him with a dazed, expression…and Shepard was frozen in place by the sheer force of memory.

He was a few years older. A couple more lines darkened the corners of his eyes, and even at this distance, Shepard could see threads of silver in his hair. But not everything had changed. He held himself with the same quiet _stillness_ he had before, all that time ago, on the cusp of everything. His eyes still asked a million and one silent questions, as if Shepard were a puzzle Kaidan was almost afraid to try to solve.

As Shepard watched, Kaidan swallowed, his eyes dropping…to Shepard’s _mouth_ , oh Christ…and then back up again. A faint flush of color stained his cheeks.

Yeah. Oh, yeah. He remembered too. And that memory was like a drive core humming to life between them, electricity thick on the air.

Shepard wet his lips, trying to swallow back the breathless surge of awareness. As Anderson spoke—something about honor, and duty, _service_ —the star map shifted, warped, casting coils of shadow and light across Kaidan’s high cheekbones, his parted lips. They stared at each other through the galaxy itself, a few feet apart— _light years_ apart. How was this even possible? What were the odds?

A ghost. Kaidan was like a ghost from his past, from before he was anything at all, staring out at him. And there was nothing more in the universe he wanted than to walk through those particles of light and become transmogrified; become himself again.

Kevin, not Shepard. An unknown soldier talking poetry on an alien rooftop, not the fucking _hero of the blitz_. Not the _commander_.

He actually took a step forward before reality reshaped, reformed, and he realized everyone was looking at him. _Fuck_. What had he missed? Shepard swung his gaze back to Anderson, keeping the flash of panic off his face by sheer force of will. Across the star map, Kaidan was ducking his chin, color sweeping up his cheeks.

“You’ll have heard rumors,” Anderson said, smoothly continuing his speech as if Shepard hadn’t fumbled the ball. “About your entire command team. But I trust that you’ll take the time to learn the truth about the men and women that you serve with, fight with, live with. The vids only tell you so much; the way we live and die alongside you? Tells you a hell of a lot more.”

“Woo! Bring it!” someone called from the crowd, and there was a quick shuffle and hissed, “Jenkins, _hush_ ,” amongst the rise and fall of nervous laughter.

Shepard ducked his head with a quick grin, then glanced up through his lashes. Across the space map, Kaidan was rubbing his brow. He arched a dark brow in question and Shepard’s smile grew for just a moment; whoever Jenkins was, he’d broken the awkward tension.

Well. At least for now.

“Commander?” Anderson said, laughter in his voice. “Do you have anything to add?”

Eyes were on him again, but this time he was ready. “I’m not sure I can top _Woo, bring it_ , sir. Wiser words have never been spoken; all due respect, I think we should go ahead and take that advice.”

“Well, you heard the man,” Anderson answered, spreading his hands wide. “Let’s get off our asses and bring it. Dismissed.”

A cheer rose from somewhere in the back, growing louder and louder as the entire crew let loose. There were a feet hoots, some playful yelling, but mostly there were grins stretching wide across relieved faces. It felt like the start of something new, and Shepard moved to stand at the crest of the galaxy map at Anderson’s subtle gesture; his chest was so full of conflicting emotion he wasn’t sure what to do besides grip the edges of the console and let it all come crashing over his head.

Kaidan was still standing near the front, clapping. His eyes were locked on Shepard as if he couldn’t bring himself to look away. Next to him was a steel-haired doctor Shepard vaguely recognized. Next to them were crewmen, engineers, soldiers. What had to be Jenkins, jostling and laughing in the back. Navigator Presley looking pleased. In the far back, a man in a N7 trucker hat leaned against the threshold to the cockpit, a smirk wide across his face.

 _This_ , Shepard thought, swallowing the bright sparks of emotion, of possibility, swarming through him like the fireflies of Mindoir, _is home now._

Finally, at long, long last. And he had no words for how that made him feel.

He dropped his chin, half listening as Anderson spoke to Presley. The crew was beginning to break up, heading in small groups toward their stations, still talking and laughing amongst themselves—all except Kaidan. He stood there at the base of the galaxy map, pale face a delicate painting of greens and purples and reds and blues. He tilted his head when Shepard met his eyes, thick brows drawing faintly together in question.

Shepard gripped the console tighter, then tilted his head toward the elevator.

Kaidan nodded, so subtle it would have been easy to miss. He turned and walked toward the rear of the ship, so stiff he may as well have been at parade attention. Shepard had to fight not to watch him go.

 _Fuck_.

“Captain,” Shepard said suddenly, turning back to Anderson. He must have sounded normal; Anderson barely flicked a brow at the interruption. “If you’ve no need of me, I wanted to get settled into my bunk before making rounds.”

“Of course,” Anderson said. “Go ahead. Oh, and Shepard,” he added as Shepard turned away. He looked back at the older man, head tilted in question. Anderson just smiled, the curve of those lips saying more than his careful words ever could. “Make sure you get to know the crew as well as you can. You’re going to be my eyes and ears out there.”

He could feel his ears going hot. “Sir,” Shepard said by way of agreement, because what else _was_ there to say? _I think I already know at least one crewmember a little too well for comfort?_ God, he was so screwed. He turned away, hurrying down the steps before catching himself and slowing his pace to a casual stride. Kevin may have been the type who let nerves hurry his pace, but Shepard was supposed to be better than that.

(Shepard was better than _Kevin_ in a lot of ways.)

He nodded to a passing crewmember and counted out the frantic race of his heart as he turned the corner of the hull and spotted Kaidan waiting for him. The other man was standing awkwardly, hands fisting and unfisting at his sides as if he wasn’t quite sure what to do with them, color still suspiciously high. He jerked his head up when Shepard came into sight, and the two of them froze there for a long, long minute, just looking at each other.

Tall, dark, and handsome. Wasn’t that the old idiom? Kaidan was nothing if not tall, dark, and handsome. His lips looked incredibly soft, parted on a breath, and it took all of Shepard’s self-control not to stare at them and remember the taste of his kiss, the swipe of his tongue, the way he moaned when Shepard dragged his blunt fingernails across his scalp and rocked their erections together.

 _Fuck_ , he thought, swallowing hard. _This can’t happen_. Because that had been Kevin up there on that roof, and he was Commander Shepard now. He was the XO of the Normandy. He had an entire crew relying on him.

Slowly, Shepard dropped his gaze.

Kaidan reached out and pressed the call button in response. The doors swung open. He tilted his head in question. And yeah. Yeah, Shepard figured that they really did need to talk about this—air out the awkwardness so they could just move on.

Shepard cleared his throat and made himself move, crossing the last bit of distance between them. He felt the electric frisson of awareness when he passed, their shoulders very nearly brushing…and then Kaidan was stepping into the elevator with him and the doors were sliding shut.

They were alone.

So very, incredibly alone.

_Christ._

Shepard kept his gaze forward and drew in a breath that was steady by sheer willpower. He could almost swear he heard Kaidan’s heart racing just as fast as his. He could certainly feel the heat being cast off his body, could sense the tension tightening all those muscles beneath Alliance blue.

Kaidan let out a low, unsteady breath, and Shepard tilted his head to look at him. His gut twisted in awareness when he met Kaidan’s eyes; when he shifted, his knuckles not-quite-accidentally brushed Kaidan’s hand.

 _You can’t do this_ , Shepard told himself, entire body blooming in response to Kaidan’s stunned, shocky gaze. _You can’t have this._

Which was true. God, it was so true. But it didn’t stop him from wanting it. From across a galaxy, fate had tossed him back together with the man who’d last seen him before the end of Kevin’s world; he represented a complex, complicated ball of emotion that Shepard had shoved away. _Before the Blitz._ Wasn’t it funny how he could divide his life so evenly into these befores and afters? Before the razing of Mindoir. Before the Blitz. And now, maybe, before the Normandy.

 _I wish_ , he thought, meeting Kaidan’s eyes, letting that mask fall— _letting Kaidan in_. Letting him see the thoughts circling each other in a moment of raw honesty and intimacy he hadn’t felt in a very, very long time. For a moment, it was as if time had rewound and they were back on that roof. He was back to being just Kevin.

His eyes dropped to Kaidan’s mouth and he felt his stomach twist in response.

Kaidan closed his eyes. “Shit,” he said, feelingly—then grabbed him by the collar and shoved him back against the far wall of the elevator, chasing his mouth with a sharp, hungry, _desperate_ kiss.

And Kevin came alive in his arms.


	6. To Have and Have Not

“To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.” ―Federico García Lorca, _Blood Wedding and Yerma_

 

He surged into Kaidan’s kiss, fingers digging in thick dark hair. Their mouths clashed like they were going to war and Kevin could _taste_ each harsh, staccato burst of Kaidan’s breath. It was maddening yet perfect— _perfectly maddening_ , the small part of his brain that hadn’t immediately short-circuited supplied. It didn’t matter that he shouldn’t want this because there was no force in the ‘verse strong enough to keep him from responding.

_Yes. Yes. Yes yes yes._

He was parched earth drinking in the rain as his lips parted for the slick glide of Kaidan’s tongue. It was strange how _familiar_ the taste of him was, despite how long it had been since that rooftop. He’d been the last man Kevin had kissed. He wondered—as their tongues twined together, as their bodies pressed hard, harsh, fighting for more—whether he’d been carrying around a bit of Kaidan inside him all this time.

It would make sense. At least, it would make _this_ make sense—the way Kaidan so easily slotted against him. The way his heart thrummed in response to his proximity. The breathless, twisting, inexplicable _joy_ that filled him as he swallowed around Kaidan’s thrusting tongue and gripped those dark curls so tight it had to be painful.

Kaidan just grunted in response and pushed Kevin back a step, backing him into the cool wall of the elevator. One hand curled protectively around the shaved-close curve of his scalp, knuckles taking the brunt of the blow as Kevin’s head impacted the wall with a dull clang.

The elevator was still crawling down toward the next floor, slow enough that it felt something very much like a miracle. Kaidan reached out blindly, pushing at buttons even as he devoured Kevin’s mouth. His hips were pressed close, hard line of his erection rocking against Kevin’s hip, and Kevin didn’t even give himself time to think—to second-guess—as he twisted to drag their hard cocks together.

“ _Shit_ ,” Kaidan breathed, breaking the kiss on a harsh gasp. Yet he still didn’t pull away, so close and so warm and so… So…

Kevin slid his hands across those squared shoulders and down his chest, memorizing all over again the feel of him. Each panting breath was shared and returned, and he thought maybe he would like to die like this: shuddering and wanted and utterly content. “You feel,” Kevin began, voice husky, but there weren’t words for how Kaidan felt against him. For how Kevin felt, full stop. Even if he fumbled through his memory, there was nothing in all the books he’d read or poems he’d memorized that quite captured this sense of at last, _at last_ , coming home.

Which, of course, was the elevator’s cue to finally settle into the shuttle bay.

Kaidan pulled back with a low breath, putting some distance between them just as the doors began to slide open. He dragged a hand over his face and up into his hair, whiskey-brown eyes nearly swallowed by pupil. _Dark_ as he glanced at Kevin. His lips were damningly slick, red.

_Fuck_ , but Kevin could feel the burn of Kaidan’s stubble against his own cheeks. He—XO of the Normandy, decorated war hero, survivor—actually _blushed_ at the realization.

“We should,” Kaidan began, even as Kevin said, “Let’s try to—” They both stopped, uncertain. Kaidan tipped his head and Kevin nodded, and there was one uncertain beat before they stepped out of the waiting elevator, each of them awkwardly trying to let the other go first. It was an embarrassing shuffle at the door, the strangeness of the moment thankfully just enough to cool his blood so it wasn’t such a pain to walk.

(Even so, Kevin surreptitiously adjusted the front of his Alliance uniform, grateful it was dark enough to hide a multitude of sins. Or excitement. _Jesus._ )

He looked away from Kaidan, needing the mental space so he could get a grip. Just past the elevator doors was a huge, high-ceilinged room. Consoles flanked the elevator, and boxes were piled high along the left side. Further back, gear lockers waited in a patient line, and across from _them_ a team was already getting to work on a Mako. The whole place buzzed with quiet efficiency.

If Kevin had been with anyone else, at any other time, he would have been doing his best to look professional as he tried not to gawk. This, _this_ was his ship—his and Anderson’s. It blew his mind that he could have somehow gone from backwater colony boy to XO of the Normandy, and if it hadn’t been Kaidan at his side, he would have _had_ to pretend like it wasn’t impacting him. And yet even though Kaidan was now his subordinate officer, he was also…Kaidan. And whatever it was that made Kevin feel so _right_ by his side also let him relax in ways he never had before, eyes widening in almost child-like wonder as he looked around the gleaming bulkheads.

It was just… She was so… The Normandy was _everything_ he’d ever wanted.

Kaidan’s fingers briefly tangled with his—the gesture hidden by their bodies—and squeezed. Kevin squeezed back for all he was worth.

“She’s astonishing,” Kaidan said, voice pitched low. Reading his mind.

Kevin let his gaze smooth over the high beams, then down to the corrugated metal floor. His heart was still pounding almost alarmingly fast, and yet all he could do was smile. “She’s perfect,” he said.

Kaidan brushed a thumb along the meat of Kevin’s palm before letting go. That caress—because what else could he call it?—drew Kevin’s attention unerringly back to him, and he was torn between gazing into those beautiful eyes and staring at his parted lips.

Fuck, but he wanted to be kissing him again.

Kaidan wet his lips as if sensing those thoughts too. Or maybe he was simply soldiering through his own barrage of _want_? Kevin wished he had the balls to ask. “We should… We should talk. Before things get…complicated.”

“ _Before_ things get complicated?” Kevin said with a strangled laugh. But he shook his head at Kaidan’s helpless shrug. “No, you’re right. You’re right. Let’s, um, find someplace to…”

“To _talk,”_ Kaidan stressed—but it sounded more like a reminder to himself. “Just to talk.”

Kevin stepped away and swept his gaze across the room again. The only activity seemed to be focused around the Mako. If they kept their voices down… “This way,” he said, veering left. The cargo boxes formed something of a maze, stacked high with small, winding walkways between them for easy access. Kevin wound through the containers, giving into temptation to run his fingers along the Normandy’s bulkhead as they reached the outer wall. The tall barriers blocked out the sound of the crew’s low voices, and everything was darker here—shadowed. It _felt_ completely private tucked in this far corner, as if the maze of cargo had led them to a whole new world.

He looked around, then grabbed hold of one of the iron divots, dragging himself up easily. It reminded him so much of Mindoir. Not the sterile cleanliness of the metal—even the nicest pods had gone rust-colored in the constant dust storms after only a few cycles—but the way everything was stacked in neat lines. He used to climb the sheer walls of those stacked pods every day, unerringly finding nooks and crannies and places to hide. It shouldn’t have felt like tracing his way to the past as he clambered over the Normandy’s supply crates, but all at once he felt like a boy again—running to ground the way he always did.

Only this time, he had Kaidan with him.

“You’re—fast,” Kaidan managed, breathing a little hard as he followed Kevin. Kevin levered himself up onto the final, next-to-tallest crate and turned to offer Kaidan his hand. If they shimmied around the corner, they would be completely concealed—so high up no one would think to look for them here. The thought brought a quick, flashing grin to his face, and Kaidan blinked rapidly at him as he let Kevin draw him up to his level…their bodies once again close.

He could practically hear Kaidan’s racing heart. He could feel hot breath against his cheeks. He thought—unable to help himself—that this would be the perfect place to hide away to kiss and kiss and _kiss_ where they couldn’t possibly be discovered.

Kevin flushed and let go of Kaidan’s hand, ducking behind the crate. He sat with his back to the Normandy’s hull, completely shielded from the world, and tried not to let the naked hunger show on his face when Kaidan almost reluctantly followed him. Kaidan stared down at him for a moment before letting out a shaky breath and crouching by his side. His muscles were tight with tension. No, with _awareness_. They were both thrumming with it.

_If I touched him now_ , Kevin thought, hands curling and uncurling into fists, _he wouldn’t say no._

“Talk,” Kevin said, just as much to himself as Kaidan. “We need to talk.”

“Yes. I just… I’m having a hard time believing this is happening,” Kaidan admitted. His voice was gravel-rough, maybe thicker than usual. “After the last time I saw you, I— I figured that was pretty much it.”

Kevin glanced at him out of the corner of his eyes. “Did you know who I was?” he asked.

“No.” Kaidan paused, then laughed. He had an incredible laugh, warm enough to sink straight into your bones. “But then, _Kevin Shepard_ didn’t mean much back then, did it? You were just another low-ranking Alliance officer sneaking away to grab a moment to himself. Just like me.”

“I’m still just like you,” Kevin pointed out.

Kaidan tipped his head to look at him— _really_ look—dark brows pulled into a frown. He had such an expressive face, Kevin thought. An expressive face and knowing eyes. “I don’t know if that’s true,” Kaidan said. “Something like what you did…it marks you.”

“I’ve been _marked_ for a lot longer than the Blitz.” Kevin curled his hands into loose fists. “You saw the vids, I’m betting. You know.”

The entire _galaxy_ knew his story. Talented biotic raised in a backward colony. The soldier that had pulled him from his family’s storage compartment had been filming that day—for the official record—and sometime after the Blitz, those classified images had been leaked to the press. He never could bring himself to watch it all, but sometimes he wasn’t fast enough to change the channel and his own big, haunted eyes would stare up at him from the screen—face pale beneath the streaks of his mother’s blood.

The tragic survivor.

There weren’t vids of the thresher maw, thank God, but that hadn’t stopped the news outlets from coming up with simulations, each one more out of touch with reality than the next. And of course there were shots from the Blitz. There were interviews with the men and women who had followed him. There were pictures of him streaked with grime and staring with grim determination, jaw clenched like some hero out of a novel. Only if they had been willing to move past the heroic surface—cracked open his skull to see what was going on inside—all they would have heard was screaming.

Funny how the galaxy saw the traumatized little boy and the supposed war hero and figured one had grown strong from the other. Nobody realized that inside, he was still crouched beneath the blood-slick grating, breath held as Piggy screamed in the distance.

Yeah. He’d been marked, all right. But it wasn’t some cleansing _fires of battle_ bullshit. All he’d wanted during the Blitz was to make sure that this time, everyone _survived_. That was his driving goal in everything he did now—because they couldn’t haunt his dreams if they survived.

“Shepard,” Kaidan said, voice low and cracked open. Then, “ _Kevin_ , it’s okay.” That warm hand was touching the curve of his skull again, turning him toward Kaidan’s welcoming body, and it was— It was a miracle, being _seen_ like this. Being known. So few people even looked past Shepard anymore, and…

He let himself be pulled against the warm curve of Kaidan’s side, face pressing into the crook of his neck as Kaidan swiped his hand up and down Kevin’s spine. “I’m sorry,” Kaidan said, lips brushing his temple. “I shouldn’t have dredged all that up.”

Kevin knew he should pull away—pull the _Commander Shepard_ mantel around his shoulders—but it felt _so good_ being here. He couldn’t end it just yet. “You didn’t dredge up anything,” Kevin said, slowly wrapping an arm around Kaidan’s waist. It was crazy how they kept coming together like this, even when they both knew they shouldn’t. He wondered if that was going to set the pattern of their relationship from here on out? Cleaving together, then trying to deny themselves, before giving in to insurmountable temptation again and again. “I told you: it’s always there. I’m not some…some untouchable _hero_.”

Kaidan’s lips brushed his temple. “To them you are,” he said. Then, quieter, “You really _should_ be to me. This is going to be…seriously messed up. I’m not supposed to want you.”

He squeezed his eyes shut, remembering that soldier who’d sought him out right before the thresher attack. The impossible future he’d lined out for Kevin with such a bleak brush. “No,” Kevin had to agree. “We can’t actually do this.”

“And yet,” Kaidan said.

“And yet,” Kevin agreed.

Kaidan pulled back to look at him. His thick brows were still pulled together, drawing a line down his brow. “It’s not just that I want to have sex with you,” he said—and somehow even the denial made sparks flutter low in Kevin’s belly, his body awakening at the thought. “If it was _only_ sex, it’d be different. It’d be…”

Kevin swallowed and shifted away from Kaidan’s light grip. As warm—as _perfect_ —as it was pressed up against his side, if they were going to have this conversation, they needed to be able to do it face to face. “Easy to deny,” he filled in. “I know. I feel that way too.”

Kaidan dragged his fingers through his hair with a harshly expelled breath. “I wish it were. I have no idea why it isn’t. It’s not like I really know you,” Kaidan added. “We had, what? A couple of hours on that rooftop? And then the next thing I knew, we were fighting and you were this…untouchable _hero_ on the screen. It was such a disconnect. I barely spent time in your presence, but I felt like I knew you. Even digging through all the reports didn’t make you as real to me as you were then—and God, but I wanted you back. _You_ , not _him_.”

Not Shepard. Kevin.

But he couldn’t _be_ Kevin. Not while helping Anderson run the Normandy. Right?

“The Normandy is everything I ever wanted,” Kevin said slowly. “But I’m afraid that one day I’m going to look back on my life and find it’s…empty. I don’t want to be empty forever.”

“You won’t be,” Kaidan said, reaching out to touch Kevin before seeming to think better of it. He pulled back, frowning. “Someone like you _couldn’t_ be. I just— You understand that if regulations were different, I would… Without _question_ , I would be kissing you right now? I don’t know how you got under my skin so quickly, but I haven’t been able to think of anything else ever since we met.”

“I want,” Kevin began before stopping himself. Yes, he _wanted_. He wanted so badly it was a madness, but what could he actually _have_? “You know I want you,” he finished. “I want to know you.”

Kaidan looked away with a quiet curse. “I’m not the kind of soldier who says _screw the rules_ and does what he wants,” he said. “They’re there for a reason. They’re there to _protect_ people.”

“I know,” Kevin said.

“And if we went against them anyway, you could be put in an impossible situation. Either because this…thing…between us didn’t work out and we couldn’t work together anymore…”

“I know,” Kevin said.

“…or because it _did_ work out, and one day you or the captain had to decide between my life and the lives of other crewmembers. It wouldn’t… It can’t… Kevin, _we can’t_ …”

“I _know_ ,” Kevin said. Then, dragging in a breath against the terrible tightness in his chest, he added, “And I don’t care.”

Kaidan jerked his head to look at him, cheeks flushed, eyes dark and beautifully vulnerable. “What do you mean?” he said.

Kevin reached out, his own heart tripping along in double-time, and cupped Kaidan’s cheeks. The scrape of stubble felt impossibly good against his skin. When he brushed his thumbs down the column of Kaidan’s throat, he could feel the rabbit-fast race of his pulse. “This is the stupidest thing either one of us will probably ever do,” he said, “but I don’t care. It doesn’t make sense that you mean anything at all to me, much less _this much_ when we barely know each other, but _I. Don’t. Care._ I’m not going to be old and bitter about the chances I didn’t take. Not when I can do something about that now.”

“Kevin,” he breathed, reaching up to grasp Kevin’s wrists. For a heart-stopping moment, Kevin thought Kaidan was going to push him away, but instead he just held there—fingers curled around his wrists, eyes locked with his. He was older than Kevin by a few years, but in that moment, his face looked so young. “This is… Are you sure?”

“No,” Kevin said, and Kaidan barked a laugh.

They ended up each pitching forward until their foreheads were pressed together. Somehow that small intimacy made everything feel that much brighter, better. Their mouths were close enough he could steal a kiss if he dared. “I can’t turn my back on this,” Kevin murmured, voice pitched low. “Tell me to leave you alone and I will, but I can’t just decide to walk away. I’ve never felt drawn to anyone like this before, and—Kaidan. I don’t think things like this happen for no reason.”

He let out a shaky breath. “You’re persuasive,” he said. “I’ll give you that.” Then he closed his eyes and they sat there for what felt like a very long time, just breathing together—breathing each other in—slowly sinking into a steady mutual awareness. It was the most comfortable Kevin had ever felt in his life. He had never, _never_ been at ease around another person like he was with Kaidan.

He wished he understood _why_.

“If it comes to a decision,” Kaidan murmured, suddenly breaking the silence, “between me and someone else…”

Kevin squeezed his eyes shut. “I won’t let this interfere,” he said. “I’ll judge the merits of the situation with a clear mind.”

“You won’t save me.”

That made him pull away, breaking their connection. Kaidan’s lashes flickered as he opened his eyes, looking at Kevin with a searching gaze. “I didn’t say that,” Kevin said. Before Kaidan could protest, he added: “I’m Commander Shepard. I’m going to save _everyone_.”

Kaidan husked a laugh at that, startled, and Kevin smiled in return. He brushed his thumbs once lightly over Kaidan’s cheeks before letting them drop—but Kaidan caught one hand and turned his face into it, pressing a kiss to the center of Kevin’s palm. “You’re Commander Shepard,” he agreed, words hot against Kevin’s skin. “And you know…I almost believe you. All right.”

Kevin felt as if they’d launched into a mass effect field with no warning; his stomach twisted and his heart lurched. “All right?” he echoed.

Kaidan flopped back against the containers, perfect posture broken. He dragged his fingers through his hair again, leaving it standing up a tangled, curly mess. It looked, Kevin couldn’t help but feel, utterly charming. “All right. God knows it seems like I can’t say _no_ to you, no matter how much common sense is screaming at me. But we have to be slow and we have to be careful. And if at any point either of us needs to call…this…off, we do it. No questions.”

“All right,” Kevin echoed again, dazed. It seemed unreal, and yet Kaidan was _right there_ , looking at him with a crooked sort of smile. He wanted to kiss that twist of his lips. He wanted to taste the words on his tongue. He wanted to—

Kevin pulled back suddenly, realizing he’d been leaning in to do all that and more. “Wait,” he said; Kaidan blinked open eyes that had begun to drift shut in anticipation. “How slow is slow?”

Kaidan laughed. The sound was _joyful_ , and Kevin found himself grinning back, unable to contain the thrill of near-perfect happiness. This was the dumbest thing he could have done, and yet— _Kaidan_. Kaidan and the Normandy and Captain Anderson to guide them. It seemed everything in his life was finally, _finally_ coming together. “How about you come kiss me,” Kaidan said, “and we’ll figure out _slow_ together.”

“Well that sounds like a terrible plan,” Kevin mused, but he was leaning in almost before the words were past his lips, resting his weight on a palm pressed to the container behind Kaidan’s head as he caught those warm, soft lips on a nearly-chaste kiss.

Kaidan melted against him, hands sliding up his chest, across his shoulders. “Mmm,” he murmured, nails scratching oh-so lightly across Kevin’s buzzed skull. His lips parted.

And oh, _oh_ there was nothing better in this world than to catch Kaidan’s lower lip between his teeth, to swipe his tongue along the faint sting, to slick deep into his mouth and swallow his soft moan as they sank deeper and deeper into each other, as tangled up as the moment they’d first met.

Kissing in the shadows of the Normandy’s shuttle bay and practically daring fate to tear them apart.


End file.
